Wanderings in Arabia : being an abridgment of "Travels in Arabia deserta"

WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

WANDERINGS IN
ARABIA

BY

CHARLES M. DOUGHTY

BEING AN ABRIDGMENT

OF

-TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA"

ARRANGED WITH INTRODUCTION BY

EDWARD GARNETT

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.

LONDON

DUCKWORTH AND CO.

3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
1908

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

KHEYBAR "THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY "

The night at Kheybar. Abd el-Hady. Ahmed. The gunner's belt. Khey-
bar by daylight. Medina soldiery. Muharram. Sirur. The Nasrany
brought before the village governor. Amm Mohammed en-Nejumy.
Amiin. The Gallas. E vening in the soldiers' kahwa. Ibrahim the kady.
Hejaz Arabic. A worthy negro woman. Aram Mohammed's house.
Wadies of Kheybar. The Albanians. The Nasruny accused. Friendship
with Amm Mohammed. Our well labour. His hunting. Abdullah's
letter to the Governor of Medina. Abdullah's tales. His tyranny at
Kheybar. Sedition in the village. Abdullah's stewardship. Dakhil the
post. Aly, the religious sheykh, an enemy to death. The Nejumy's
warning to Abdullah, spoken in generous defence of the Nasrany. The
ostrich both bird and camel. Amm Mohammed had saved other
strangers Pp. 1-24

CHAPTER II
THE MEDINA LIFE AT KHEYBAR

Amm Mohammed's Kurdish family. His life from his youth. His son Haseyn.
He is a chider at home. Ahmed. A black fox. The Nejumy a perfect
marksman. His marvellous eye-sight. The ignorances of his youth. A
brother slain. His burning heart to avenge him. A Beduin marksman
slain, by his shot, in an expedition. A running battle. He is wounded.
Dakhil returns not at his time. The Nasrany's life in doubt. Amm
Mohammed's good and Abdullah's black heart, Dakhil arrives in the
night. Atrocious words of Abdullah. " The Engleys are friends and
not rebels to the Sooltan." Andalusia of the Arabs. An English letter
to the Pasha of Medina. Abdullah's letter. Spitting of some account in
their medicine .Pp. 25-37

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER III

GALLA-LAND. MEDINA LOEE

The Abyssinian Empire. Galla-land. Perpetual warfare of (heathen) Gallas
and (Christian) Abyssinians. A renegade Frank or Traveller at Mecca
and Medina. SAbia drink. A hospitable widow (at Tayif). "The
Nasara are the Sea's offspring." Wady Bishy. Muharram's death.
The Nasntny accused. Sale of Muharram's goods. Aly, the (deadly)
enemy of the Nasrany. A Roman invasion of ancient Arabia. Aelius
-Gallus sent by Augustus, with an army, to occupy the riches of A. Felix.
The Halhal. The Hurda. The Kheyabara abstain from certain meats-
Another Ageyly's death. — His grave * violated by the witches.' Pp. 38-51

CHAPTER IV

DELIVERANCE FROM KHEYBAR

Amm Mohammed's wild brother-in-law. The messenger arrives from Medina.
The Nasrany procures that the water is increased at Kheybar. Ayn
er-Reyih. A letter from the Pasha of Medina. Violence of Abdullah.
Might one forsake the name of his religion, for a time ? Amm Mohammed
would persuade the Nasrany to dwell with him at Kheybar. The Engleys
in India. The Nasrany's Arabic books are stolen by a Turkish Colonel at
Medina. Return of the camel-thief. The villagers of el-Hayat. Humanity
loves not to be requited. Mutinous villagers beaten by Abdullah. Deyik es~
sudr. Departure from Kheybar. Hamed. Love and death. Amm Moham-
med's farewell. Journey over the Harra. Come to Heteym tents.
Habara fowl. Stormy March wind. The Hejjur mountains. Eagles.
Meet with Heteym. ' The Nasara inhabit in a city closed with iron.'
Solubbies from near Mecca. The rafiks seeking for water. Certain deep
and steyned wells "were made by the Jan." Blustering March weather. The
Harra craters. " God give that young man (Ibn Rashid) long life ! "

Pp. 52-76

CHAPTER V

DESERT JOURNEY TO HAYIL. THE NASRANY IS DRIVEN
FROM THENCE

Ey&da ibn Ajjiueyn, seen again. Uncivil Heteym hosts. Ghroceyb. Salih,
again. Strife with the rafiks. A desolate night in the khala. ZOl Come
to tents and good entertainment. A rautha in the desert. Hunter's

CONTEN vn

roast. Th« Tto, or phantom tbeltil in the SbermriU country. •

person. Braitshan, a Sharmnar Shrykh. The lii>t, hamlet in .1. Sha:
Another grange in the desert. 'lietueen the dog and the wolf. ' '1 he
village el-Kasr. Tidings that the Emir is absent from Hayil. :
Temtn. Hayil in sight. Gofar. Come to Hayil, the second time.
Aneybar left deputy for Ibn Uashid in the town. The Nasn'my is
received with ill-will and fanaticism. Aneybar is now an adversary. A
Medina Sherif in Hayil. The townspeople's fanaticism in tin: morning ;
a heavy hour. Depart, tin- second time, with trouble from Ilayil. Come
again to Gofar. B. Tcmin and Shammar. ... Pp. 77-106

CHAPTER VI
THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD

Herding Supper of milk. A flight of cranes. An evil desert journey, and
night, with treacherous rafiks. Aly of Gussa again. Braitsha"n's booths
again. "Arabs love the smooth speaking." Another evil journey. A
menzil of Heteym ; and parting from the treacherous rafiks. Nomad
thirst for tobacco. A beautiful Heteym woman. Solubba. Maatukand
Noweyr. " Nasara " passengers. Life of these Heteym. Burial of the
Nasrany's books. Journey to the Harb, eastward. Gazelles. Camel-
milk bitter of wormwood. Heteym menzils. Come to Harb Aarab.
False rumour of a foray of the Wahaby. El-Auf. An Harb sheykh. An
Harb bride. Mount again, and alight by night at tents. Motlog and
Tollog. Come anew to Ibn Nabal's tent. Ibn Nahal, a merchant Beduin.
His wealth. A rich man rides in a ghrazzu, to steal one camel ; and is
slain. Tollog's inhospitable ferij. Wander to another menzil. "Poor
Aly." An Ageyly descried. A new face. A tent of poor acquaintance.

Pp. 107-135

CHAPTER VII

JOURNEY TO EL-KASIM : BOREYDA

Beduin carriers. Set out with Hained, a Shammary. . . Ayiin. <•

Watchtowers. Bare hospitality in el-Kasim. The deep sand-land and its
inhabitants. Aspect of Boreyda. The town. The Emir's hostel. The
Nasrany is robbed in the court yard. Jeyber, the Emir's officer. The
Kasr Hajellan. Abdullah, the Emir's brother. Boreyda citizens ; the
best are camel masters iu the caravans. Old tragedies of the Emirs. Tho
town. A troubled afternoon. Set out on the morrow for Am\/a.

Pp. 13G-155
VOL. II. I

vm

CONTENTS

CHAPTEK VIII

ANEYZA

The Nefud (of el-Kasim). Passage of the Wady er-Rummah. The Nasrany,
forsaken by his rafik, finds hospitality ; and enters Aneyza. Aspect of
the town. The Emir Zdtnil. His uncle Aly. The townspeople. Ab-
dullah el-Khenntyny. His house and studies. Breakfast with Zamil.
The Nasrany is put out of his doctor's shop by the Einir Aly. A Zelot.
Dreakfast with el-Khenneyny. Eye diseases. Small-pox in the town.
' The streets of Aneyza. The homely and religious life of these citizens.
Women are unseen. Abdullah el-Bessam. A dinner in his house. Nasir
es-Smtry. The day in Aneyza. el-Khenneyny's plantation. Hamed es-
Sdfy, Abdullah JBessam, the younger, and Sheykh Ibn Ayitli. An old
Ateyba Sheykh : Zelotism. The infirm and destitute. The Nasrany 's
friends . Pp. 156-182

CHAPTER IX
LIFE IN ANEYZA

Rumours of warfare. A savage tiding from the North. The Meteyr Aarab.
The 'Ateyba. A Kahtany arrested in the street. A capital crime.
Friday afternoon lecture. The Muttowwa. An inoculator and leech at
Aneyza. The Nasrany without shelter. Arabian sale horses ; and the
Northern or Gulf horses. El-'Eyarieh. The Wady er-Rummah north-
ward. Khdlid bin WaMd. Owsbazieh. Deadly strife of well-diggers.
Ancient man in Arabia. The Nasrany is an outlaw among them.

Pp. 183-196

CHAPTER X

THE CHRISTIAN STRANGER DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA ; AND
RECALLED

Yahya's homestead. Beduins from the North. Rainless years and murrain.
Picking and stealing in Aneyza. Handicrafts. Hurly-burly of fanatic
women and children against the Nasrany. Violence of the Emir Aly,
who sends away the stranger by night. Night journey in the Nefud.
The W. er-Rummah. Strife with the camel driver. Come to Khobra in
the Nefud. The emir's kahwa. The emir's blind father. Armed riders
of Boreyda. Medicine seekers. The town. An 'Aufy. The cameleer
returns from Zamil ; to convey the stranger again to Aneyza ! Ride to

CONTF^ ix

•1-HeUtteb, Kl-r.ukn-ii-1.. Ildalid. oasis. Night journey in the Nefud.
Alight ;i( an outlying plantation of Aneyza (appointed for the residence
of the Nasrany). Visit of Abdullah el-Khenneyny. . Pp. 197-216

CHAPTER XI

KAHTAN EXPELLED FROM EL-KASlM

. Well-waters of Aneyza. Well-driving and irrigation. Evenings in the
orchard. The kinds of palms. Locusts. The Bosra caravan arrives.
Violence of Ibrahim. Rasheyd visits his jeneyny. The hareem. The
small-pox. Bereaved households. The Meteyr Aarab gather to Aneyza.
Warfare of the town, with the Meteyr, against the (intruded) Kahtan.
Morning onset of Meteyr. Zamil approaches. Final overthrow and
flight of the Kahatin. Hayzsin is slain. Tie Kahtan camp in the power
of Meteyr. A Moghrebby enthralled among those Kahtan is set free.
The Meteyr and the town return from the field. Beduin wives wailing
for their dead. 'When the Messiah comes will he bid us believe in
Mohammed ? ' The great sheykh of the Meteyr. The departure of the
Mecca caravan is at hand. Hamed el- Yah} a. The Nasrany removes to
the Khenneyny's palm-ground Pp. 217-236

CHAPTER XII

SET OUT FROM EL-KASIM, WITH THE BUTTER CARAVAN
FOR MECCA

Abdullah el-Khenneyny ; — a last farewell. Sleyman, a merchant-carrier in
the kafily. The camp at 'Auhelh\n. The Emir d-kdfily. The setting
out. Noon halt. Afternoon march. The evening station. Er-Russ.
The Aban mountains. Ibrahim, the emir. Simum wind. The last
desert villages. A watering. Beduin Rafiks. Arc not these deserts
watered by the monsoon rains ? An alarm. Caravaners and Beduins. The
landscape seyls to the W. er-Rummab. Camels and cameleers. 'Afif,
a well-station. Signs of hunters. Caravan paths to Mecca. Wady
Jerrtr. Mountain landmarks, Thiilm and Edhl. Water tasting of alum.
The Harrat d-Kisshub. Thirst in the caravan. Sley man's opinion of
English shippers. A pleasant watering-place. El-Moy : cries in the
evening menzil. Er-Ruklcaba. Beduins. Sh'aara watering. Harrat
'Ashtry. Kr-liVa. Es-Seyl [KuRN EL-MEN AZIL]. Head of the W. el-
Humth. New aspect of Arabia. The caravaners about to enter Mecca
take the ihrdm. The Hatheyl. The ashraf descend from Mohammed.
Arrive at the 'Ayn (ez-Zeyma). Mecca is a city of the Tehdma. The
Nasrany leaves the Nejd caravan, at the station before Mecca ; and is
assailed by a nomad hherif ...... Pp. 237-270

x CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIII

TAYIF. THE SHBRtF, EMIR OF MECCA

Maabub and Salem. The Nasrany captive. Troubled day at the 'Ayn.
Night journey with Mecca caravaners. Return to es-Seyl. The Seyl
station. The Nasrany assailed again. A Mecca personage. An un-
worthy Bessam. A former acquaintance. 'Okatz. The path beyond to
et-Tayif. Night journey. Alight at a sherif's cottage near Tayif. Poor
women of the blood of Mohammed. Aspect of et-Tayif. The town.
The Nasrany is guest of a Turkish officer. Evening audience of the
Sherif. Sherif Hasseyn, Emir of Mecca. The Sherif's brother Abdillah.
Salem brings again their booty. [Doughty sets out again ; and reaches
Jidda in safety. The end.] ' Pp. 271-292

CHAPTER I

KHEYBAR. "THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY"

WE passed the gates made of rude palm boarding into the
street of the Hejaz negro village, and alighted in the dusk
before the house of an acquaintance of Ghroceyb. The host,
hearing us busy at the door of his lower house, looked down
from the casement and asked in the rasping negro voice what
men we were ? Ghroceyb called to him, and then he came
down with his brother to receive the guests. They took my
bags upon their shoulders, and led us up by some clay stairs to
their dwelling-house, which is, as at el-Ally, an upper chamber,
here called suffa. The lower floor, in these damp oases, is a
place where they leave the orchard tools, and a stable for their
few goats which are driven in for the night. This householder
was named Abel el-Hddy, ( Servitor of Him who leadeth in the
way of Truth/ a young man under the middle age, of fine negro
lineaments. — These negro-like Arabians are not seldom comely.

Our host's upper room was open at the street side with long
casements, tdga, to the floor ; his roof was but a loose strawing
of palm stalks, and above is the house terrace of beaten clay,
to which you ascend [they say erkd /] by a ladder of two or
three palm beams, laid side by side, with steps hacked in them.
Abd el-Hady's was one of the better cottages, for he was a sub-
stantial man. Kheybar is as it were an African village in the
Hejaz. Adb el-Hady spread his carpet and bade us welcome, and
set before us Kheybar dates, which are yellow, small and stived
together ; they are gathered ere fully ripe [their Beduin partner's
impatience, and distrust of each other !] and have a drug-like
or fenny savour, but are "cooler " than the most dates of the
country and not unwholesome. After these days' efforts in the
Harra we could not eat; we asked for water to quench our
burning thirst. They hang their sweating girbies at the stair-
head, and under them is made a hole in the flooring, that the
drip may fall through. The water, drawn, they said, from the

VOL. II. A

2 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

spring head under the basalt, tasted of the ditch,; it might be
sulphurous. We had left our theliil kneebound in the street.

Many persons, when they heard say that strangers had
arrived, came up all this evening to visit us ; — the villagers
were black men. Ghroceyb told them his tale of the ghrazzu ;
and the negroes answered " Wellah ! except we sally in the
morning to look for them — ! " They feared for the outlying
corn lands, and lest any beast of theirs should be taken.
There came with the rest a tall and swarthy white man, of
a soldierly countenance, bearing a lantern and his yard-long
tobacco-pipe : I saw he was of the mixed inhabitants of the
cities. He sat silent with hollow eyes and smoked tobacco,
often glancing at us ; then he passed the cliib'tik to me and
enquired the news. He was not friendly with Abd el-Hady,
and waived our host's second cup. The white man sat on
smoking mildly, with his lantern burning ; after an hour he
went forth [and this was to denounce us, to the ruffian lieu-
tenant at Kheybar]. My rafik told me in a whisper, " That was
Ahmed; he has been a soldier and is now a tradesman at
Kheybar." — His brother was Mohammed en~Nejdmyt he who
from the morrow became the generous defender of my adversity
at Kheybar : they were citizens of Medina. It was near mid-
night when the last coffee-drinkers departed ; then I whispered
to Ghroceyb : " Will they serve supper, or is it not time to
sleep ? " " My namesake, I think they have killed for thee ;
I saw them bring up a sheep, to the terrace, long ago." —
" Who is the sheikh of the village ?"— " This Abd el-Hady is
their sheykh, and thou wilt find him a good man." My rafik
lied like a (guileful) nomad, to excuse his not carrying me to
the W. Aly village.

Our host and his brother now at length descended from the
house-top, bearing a vast metal tray of the seethed flesh upon
a mess of thura (it may be a sort of millet) : since the locusts
had destroyed their spring corn, this was the only bread-stuff
left to them at Kheybar.

The new day's light beginning to rise, Ghroceyb went down
to the street in haste ; " Farewell, he said, and was there any
difference between us, forgive it Khalil ; " and taking my right
hand (and afraid perchance of the stranger's malediction), he
stooped and kissed it. Hady, our host's brother, mounted also
upon the croup of his thelul ; this strong-bodied young negro,
with a long matchlock upon his shoulder, rode forth in his bare
tunic, girded only with the hdzam or gunner's belt. Upon the
baldric are little metal pipes, with their powder charges, and

TIIR ENVIRONS OF KIIKVIVM? 3

upon the girdlr leather pouches for shot, flint and steel, ;m<l
a hook wlinviipon ;i man they g<> commonly li.'irefoot — will

dais. The hteams art adorned with copper studs
juul beset with little rattling chains; there are some young men
who may be seen continually muhdzamin, girded and vain-
glorious with these tinkling ornaments of war. It is commonly
said of trills \vll provided with fire-arms " They have many
mulia/amin."— Ilady rode to find the traces of the ghrazzu of
day.

Some of the villagers came up to me immediately to enquire
for medicines : they were full of tedious words ; and all was to
lu'g of me and buy none. I left them sitting and went out to
see the place, for this was Kheybar.

Our host sent his son to guide me ; the boy led down by a
lane and called me to enter a doorway and see a spring. I
went in : — it was a mesjid ! and I withdrew hastily. The father
(who had instructed the child beforehand), hearing from him
when we came again that I had left the place without praying,
went down and shut his street door. He returned and took
his pistol from the wall, saying, * Let us go out together and he
would show me round the town.' When we were in the street,
he led me by an orchard path, out of the place.

We came by a walled path through the palms into an open
space of rush-grass and black vulcanic sand, es-Sefsdfa : there
he showed me the head of a stream which welled strongly from
under the figgera. The water is tepid and sulphurous as at
el-Ally, and I saw in it little green-back and silver-bellied
fishes : — all fish are named hUt by the Arabians. " Here, he
said, is the (summer) menzil of the Dowla, in this ground stand
the askars' tents." We sat down, and gazing into my face he
asked me, * Were I afraid of the Dowla ? ' "Is the Dowla
better or Ibn Kashid's government ? " — " The Dowla delivered
us from the Beduw, — but is more burdenous."

We passed through a burial ground of black vulcanic mould
and salt-warp : the squalid grave-heaps are marked with head-
stones of wild basalt. That funeral earth is chapped and
ghastly, bulging over her enwombed corses, like a garden soil,
in spring-time, which is pushed by the new-spiring plants. All
is horror at Kheybar ! — nothing there which does not fill a
stranger's eye with discomfort.

— " Look, he said, this is the spring of our Lord Aly ! — I
saw a lukewarm pool and running head of water. — Here our
Lord Aly [Fatima's husband] killed Mdrhab, smiting off his
head ; and his blade cleft that rock, which thou seest there
divided to the earth : " — so we came beyond. — " And here, he

4 WANDEKINGS IN AKABIA

said, is Aly's mesjid " [already mentioned]. The building is
homely, laid in courses of the wild basalt blocks : it is certainly
ancient. Here also the village children are daily taught their
letters, by the sheykh of the religion.

When we had made the circuit, " Let us go, he said, to the
Emir" So the villager named the aga or lieutenant of a score
of Ageyl from Medina. Those thelul riders were formerly Nejd
Arabians ; but now, because the Dowla's wages are so long in
coming, the quick-spirited Nejders have forsaken that sorry
service. The Ageyl are a mixed crew of a few Nejders
(villagers, mostly of el-Kasim, and poor Nomads), and of G alias,
Turks, Albanians, Egyptians, Kurdies and Negroes. The Ageyl
at Kheybar now rode upon their feet : some of their thelul s
were dead, those that remained were at pasture (far off) with
the nomads. They all drew daily rations of corn for their
theluls alive and dead ; and how else might the poor wretches
live ? who had not touched a cross of their pay (save of a
month or twain) these two years. A few of the government
armed men at Kheybar were zabtiyah, men of the police
service. — " The Aga is a Kurdy," quoth Abd el-Hady.

We ascended, in a side street, to a suffa, which was the
soldiers' coffee-room : swords and muskets were hanging upon
the clay walls. Soon after some of them entered ; they were
all dark-coloured Gallas, girded (as townsmen) in their white
tunics. They came in with guns from some trial of their skill,
and welcomed us in their (Medina) manner, and sat down to
make coffee. I wondered whilst we drank together that they
asked me no questions ! We rose soon and departed. As we
stepped down the clay stair, I heard a hoarse voice saying
among them, " I see well, he is adu (an enemy) ; " — and I
heard answered, " But let him alone awhile."

It was time I thought to make myself known. When I asked
where was the Kurdy Aga? my host exclaimed, "You did not
see him ! he sat at the midst of the hearth." That was
Abdullah es-Sirudn, chief of the Medina crew of soldiery : his
father was " a Kurdy," but he was a black man with Galla
looks, of the younger middle age, — the son of a (Galla) bond-
woman. I was new to discern this Hejaz world, and the town
manner of the Harameyn. In the street I saw two white faces
coming out of a doorway ; they were infirm soldiery, and the
men, who walked leaning upon long staves of palm-stalks,
seemed of a ghastly pallor in the dreadful blackness of all
things at Kheybar : they came to join hands with me, a white
man, and passed on without speaking. One of them with a
hoary beard was an Albanian, Muharram ; the other was an

ABDULLAH, THE SOLDIERS* AGA 5

ptian. When we were again at home Abd el-llfidy locked
his street door; and mining ahove stairs, " Tell me, said lie,
art thou a Moslem ? and if no I will lay thy things upon a cow
and send thee to a place of safety." — " Host, I am of the
'•ys; my nation, thou n invest have heard say, is friendly
with the Dowla, and I am of them whom ye name the Nasara."

Abd el- 1 l.uly went out in the afternoon and left his street-
door open ! There came up presently Sdlem a Bed u in Ageyly,
to enquire for medicines, and a Galla with his arms, Sirtir ; —
he it was who had named me adu. — " Half a real for the fever
doses!" (salts and quinine), quoth Salem. The Galla mur-
mured, * But soon it would be seen that I should give them for
nothing ' ; and he added, " This man has little understanding of
the world, for he discerns not persons : ho ! what countryman
art thou?"— "I dwell at Damascus."— " Ha ! and that is my
country, but thou dost not speak perfectly Araby ; I am thinking
we shall have here a Nasrany : oho ! What brings thee hither ? "
— " I would see the old Jews' country." — " The Jews' country !
but this is dirat er-Rasttl, the apostle's country : " so they forsook
me. And Abd el-Hady returning, "What, said he, shall we
do ? for wellah all the people is persuaded that thou art no
Moslem." — " Do they take me for an enemy ! and the aga . . . ? "
— " Ah ! he is bjabbtir, a hateful tyrant." My host went forth,
and Sirur came up anew ; — he was sent by the aga. * What was
I ? ' he demanded. — " An Engleysy, of those that favour the
Dowla." — " Then a Nasrany ; sully aly en-Neby, — come on ! "
and with another of the Ageyl the brutal black Galla began to
thrust me to the stairs. Some villagers who arrived saying that
this was the police, I consented to go with them. " Well, bring
him (said the bystanders), but not with violence." — "Tell me,
before we go further, will ye kill me without the house ? " I
had secretly taken my pistol under my tunic, at the first alarm.

At the end of the next street one was sitting on a clay
bench to judge me, — that dark-coloured Abyssinian 'Kurdy',
whom I heard to be the soldiers' aga. A rout of villagers came on
behind us, but without cries. — In what land, I thought, am I now
arrived ! and who are these that take me (because of Christ's
sweet name !) for an enemy of mankind ? — Sirur cried, in his
bellowing voice, to him on the clay bench, "I have detected
him, — a Nasrany ! " I said, " What is this ! I am an Engleysy,
and being of a friendly nation, why am I dealt with thus ? "
" By Ullah, he answered, I was afraid to-day, art thou indeed an
Engleysy, art thou not a Muskovy ? " — " I have said it already ! "
— *k But I believe it not, and how may I trust thee ? " — " When I
have answered, here at Kheybar, / am a Nasrdny, should I not

6 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

be true in the rest ? " — " He says well ; go back, Abel el-Hady,
and fetch his baggage, and see that there be nothing left behind."
The street was full of mire after the late rain ; so I spoke to
Abdullah, and he rising led to an open place in the clay village
which is called es-Saheyn, ' the little pan.' — " By God (added
Abdullah es-Siruan, — the man was illiterate), if any books should
be found with thee, or the what-they-call-them, — charts of
countries, thou shalt never see them more : they must all be
sent to the Pasha at Medina. But hast thou not an instrument, —
ah ! and I might now think of the name, — I have it ! the air-
measure ? — And from whence comest thou ?" — " From Hayil ;
I have here also a passport from Ibn Rashld." Abdullah gave
it to a boy who learned in the day school, — for few of the grown
villagers, and none of those who stood by, knew their letters.
Abdullah : " Call me here the sheykh Sdlih, to read and write
for us." A palm-leaf mat was brought out from one of the
houses and cast before us upon a clay bench ; I sat down upon
it with Abdullah. — A throng of the black villagers stood gazing
before us.

So Salih arrived, the sheykh of this negro village — an elder
man, who walked lame — with a long brass inkstand, and a
great leaf of paper in his hand. Sir-udn : " Salih, thou art to
write all these things in order. [My great camel-bags were
brought and set down before him.] Now have out the things
one by one ; and as I call them over, write, sheykh Salih.
Begin : a camel-bridle, a girby, bags of dates, hard milk and
temmn ; — what is this ? " — " A medicine box." — " Open it! " As
I lifted the lid all the black people shrunk back and stopped
their nostrils. Sirur took in his hands that which came upper-
most, a square compass, — it had been bound in a cloth. " Let it
be untied ! " quoth Abdullah. The fellow turning it in his hand,
said, " Auh ! this is subtiny " (a square of Syrian soap), so Ab-
dullah, to my great comfort, let it pass. But Abd el-Hady
espying somewhat, stretched forth his hand suddenly, and took
up a comb ; " Ha ! ha ! " cries my host (who till now had kindly
harboured me ; but his lately good mind was turned already to
fanatical rancour — the village named him Abu Summakh, ' Father
Jangles') what is this perilous instrument, — ha! Nasrany ?
Abdullah, let him give account of it; and judge thou if it be
not some jin devised by them against the Moslemin ! "

Next came up a great tin, which I opened before them : it
was full of tea, my only refreshment. " Well, this you may shut
again," said Abdullah. Next was a bundle of books. " Aha !
exclaimed the great man, the former things — hast thou written
them, sheykh Salih ? — were of no account, but the books ! —

NIK K.MI'TY PISTOL 7

thou .shall n«'Y,M- have t hrm again."1 Thru th.-y lighted upon

the l>ra-s ivrl »>! a tap»' measure* "Ha! li-

aiul see tho;i be truth (///o////// AY* MI Ji i/i h i this

the sky-measure ': " " lleiv, I .-aid to him, I have a paper, which
is a circular passport from the Wfily of Syria." — "Then
it, sheykli Salili."* Salili pored over the written document
awhile; — "I have perused it, he answered, hut. may perceive
only the names, because it is written in Turl /, [the tnnguu was
Arabic, luit engrossed in the llorid Persian manner ! |, and here
at the foot is the seal of the Pasha," — and he read his name.
•• Ho! ho ! (cries Sirfir) that Pasha was long ago ; and he is dead,
I know it well." — A sigh of bodily weariness that would have rest
broke from me. " Wherefore thus ? exclaimed the pious scelerat
Abdullah, only stay thee upon el-Mowla (the Lord thy God)."

— To my final confusion, they fetched up from the sack's
bottom the empty pistol case ! — in that weapon was all my hope.
"Aha, a pistol case! cried many voices, and, casting their
bitter eyes upon me, oh thou ! where is the pistol ? " I answered
nothing ; — in this moment of suspense, one exclaimed, " It is
plain that Ibn Rashid has taken it from him." — " Ay, answered
the black villagers about me, he has given it to Ibn Rashid ;
Ibn Rashid has taken it from him, trust us, Abdullah." — A
pistol among them is always preciously preserved in a gay
bolster ; and they could not imagine that I should wear a naked
pistol under my bare shirt. After this I thought ' Will they
search my person ? ' — but that is regarded amongst them as
an extreme outrage ; and there were here too many witnesses.
He seemed to assent to their words, but I saw he rolled it in
his turbid mind, * what was become of the Nasrany's pistol ? '
The heavy weapon, worn continually suspended from the neck,
not a little molested me ; and I could not put off my Arab
cloak (which covered it) in the sultry days. — So he said,
" Hast thou money with thee ? — and we may be sure thou hast
some. Tell us plainly, where is it, and do not hide it ; this will
be better for thee, — and, that I may be friends with thee ! also it
must be written in the paper ; and tell us hast thou anything
else ? — mark ye 0 people, I would not that a needle of this
man's be lost ! " — " Reach me that tin where you saw the tea :
in the midst is my purse, — and in it, you see, are six liras ! " The
thief counted them, with much liking, in his black palm ; then
shutting up the purse he put it in his own bosom, saying,
" Stilih, write down these six liras Fransawy. I have taken
them for their better keeping ; and his bags will be under key
in my own house."

There came over to me Ahmed, whom I had seen last evening ;

8 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

he had been sitting with the old tranquillity amongst the
lookers-on, and in the time of this inquisition he nodded many
times to me friendly. " Md aleyk ^ md aleyk, take comfort, he
said, there shall no evil happen to thee." — Abdullah : " Abd
el-Hady, let him return to lodge with thee ; also he can cure the
sick." The negro answered, " I receive again the kafir ! — Only
let him say the testimony and I will receive him willingly." —
" Then he must lodge with the soldiery ; thou Amdn — a Galla
Ageyly — take him to your chamber : Khalil may have his pro-
visions with him and his box of medicines."

I saw the large manly presence standing erect in the back-
ward of the throng — for he had lately arrived — of a very swarthy
Arabian ; he was sheykhly clad, and carried the sword, and I
guessed he might be some chief man of the irregular soldiery.
Now he came to me, and dropping (in their sudden manner)
upon the hams of the legs, he sat before me with the confident
smiling humour of a strong man ; and spoke to me pleasantly.
I wondered to see his swarthiness, — yet such are commonly the
Arabians in the Hejaz — and he not less to see a man so ' white
and red '. This was Mohammed en-Nejumy, Ahmed's brother,
who from the morrow became to me as a father at Kheybar. " Go
now, said Abdullah, with the soldier." — " Ma aleyk, ma aleyk,"
added some of the better- disposed bystanders. Abdullah : " You
will remain here a few days, whilst I send a post to the Pasha
(of Medina) with the books and papers." — " Ho ! ye people,
bellows Sirur, we will send to the Pasha ; and if the Pasha's
word be to cut his head off, we will chop off thy head Nasrany."
" Trouble not thyself, said some yet standing by, for this fellow's
talk, — he is a brute." Hated was the Galla bully in the town,
who was valiant only with their hareem, and had been found
khbaf, a skulking coward, in the late warfare.

So I came with Aman to the small suffa which he inhabited
with a comrade, in the next house. They were both Halusli,
further-Abyssinians, that is of the land of the Gallas. Lithe
figures they are commonly, with a feminine grace and fine
lineaments ; their hue is a yellow-brown, ruddy brown, deep
brown or blackish, and that according to their native districts, —
so wide is the country. They have sweet voices and speak
not one Galla tongue alike, so that the speech of distant tribes
is hardly understood between them. Aman could not well
understand his comrade's talk (therefore they spoke together in
Arabic), but he spoke nearly one language with Sirur. Aman
taught me many of his Galla words ; but to-day I remember no
more than Ms&n, water. Though brought slaves to the Hejaz in

THE NEJUMY 9

their childhood they forgot not there their country language :
so many are now the Gallas in Mecca and Medina, that
</x//// is currently spoken from house to house. Some of
the beautiful Galla bondwomen become wives in the citizen
families, even of the great, others are nurses and house
servants ; and the Arab town children are bred up amongst
them. — The poor fellows bade me be of good comfort, and all
would now end well, after a little patience : one set bread
before me, and went out to borrow dates for their guest. They
said, " As for this negro people, they are not men but oxen, apes,
sick of the devil and niggards." — These Semite-like Africans
vehemently disdain the Sudan, or negro slave-race. " Great
God ! " I have heard them say at Kheybar, " can these woolly
polls be of the children of Adam ? "

We heard Mohammed en-Nejumy upon the clay stairs. He
said, "It is the first time I ever came hither, but for thy sake I
come." At night-fall we went forth together, lighting our way
with flaming palm-branches, to the soldiers' kahwa. Abdullah,
whom my purse had enriched to-day, beckoned me to sit beside
him. Their talk took a good turn, and Mohammed en-Nejiimy
pronounced the famous formula : hull wdhed aly dinu, ' every
man in his own religion ! ' — and he made his gloss, " this is to
say the Yahudy in his law, the Nasrany in his law and the
Moslem in his law ; aye, and the kafir may be a good faithful
man in his belief." The Nejumy was an heroic figure, he sat
with his sword upon his knees, bowing and assenting, at every
word, to the black villain Abdullah : this is their Turkish
town courtesy. Sometimes (having heard from me that I
understood no Turkish) they spoke together in that language.
Mohammed answered, after every clement saw of the black
lieutenant, the pious praise [though it sounded like an irony],
Ullah yultyith wejhak, ' the Lord whiten thy visage (in the day
of doom) ! ' There was some feminine fall in the strong man's
voice, — and where is any little savour of the mother's blood in
right manly worth, it is a pleasant grace. He was not alto-
gether like the Arabs, for he loved to speak in jesting-wise, with
a kindly mirth : though they be full of knavish humour, I never
saw among the Arabians a merry man !

Mohammed and Ahmed were sons of a Kurdy sutler at
Medina ; and their mother was an Harb woman of the Ferra, a
palm settlement of that Beduin nation in the Hejaz, betwixt
the Harameyn. We drunk round the soldiers' coffee ; yet here
was not the cheerful security of the booths of hair, but town
constraint and Turkish tyranny, and the Egyptian plague of
vermin. They bye and bye were accorded in their sober cups

10 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

that the Nasara might pass everywhere freely, only they may
not visit the Harameyn : and some said, " Be there not many
of Khalil's religion at Jidda ? the way is passed by riders in
one night-time from Mecca " [many in the Hejaz pronounce
Mekky~]. Abdullah said at last, "Wellah, Khalil is an honest
man, he speaks frankly, and I love him." I was soon weary,
and he sent his bondman to light me back to my lodging. Hear-
ing some rumour, I looked back, and saw that the barefoot negro
came dancing behind me in the street with his drawn sword.

Abdullah said to me at the morning coffee, that I might walk
freely in the village ; and the black hypocrite enquired ' had I
rested well ? ' When it was evening, he said, " Rise, we will go
and drink coffee at the house of a good man." We went out,
and some of his soldiers lighted us with flaming palm leaves to
the cottage of one Ibrahim el-kddy. Whilst we sat in his suffa,
there came up many of the principal villagers. Ibrahim set his
best dates before us, made up the fire, and began to prepare
kahwa, and he brought the village governor his kerchief full of
their green tobacco.

Then Abdullah opened his black lips — to speak to them of
my being found at Kheybar, a stranger, and one such as they
had not seen in their lives. " What, he said, are these Nasara ?
— listen all of you ! It is a strong nation : were not two or
three Nasranies murdered some years ago at Jidda ? — well,
what followed ? There came great war-ships of their nation and
bombarded the place : but you the Kheyabara know not what
is a ship ! — a ship is great, well nigh as the Husn (the old
acropolis). They began to shoot at us with their artillery, and
we that were in the fortress shot again ; but oh ! where was the
fortress ? or was there, think ye, any man that remained in the
town ? no, they all fled ; and if the Lord had not turned away
that danger, we could not have resisted them. And who were
those that fought against Jidda ? I tell you the Engleys, the
people of this Khalil : the Engleys are high-handed, ay wellab,
jababara! * * *

* * * Abdullah, though ignorant in school-lore, spoke with
that popular persuasion of the Turkish magistrates, behind
whose fair words lies the crude handling of the sword. The
Arabs and Turks whose books are men's faces, their lively ex-
perience of mankind, and whose glosses are the common saws and
thousand old sapient proverbs of their oriental world, touch near
the truth of human things. They are old men in policy in their
youth, and have little later to unlearn ; but especially they have

\\ HONEST M;<;I;<> \\ i ii

learned to r^peak well. Abdullah, ,'iiul the M'-dina
the Mack Kheyabara spoke Medina Arabic. Their illiberal 1
speech resembles t he Syrian, but is more full and round, with
some sound of ingenuous Arabian words : the tan win is nut heard
at Kheybar. 1 thought the Nejumy spoke worst amount h"in
all ; it might be he had learned of his father, a stranger, or that
such was the (Hep/,) speech of his I larb village : his brother
spoke better. Medina, besides her motley (now half Indian)
population, is in some quarters a truly Arabian town ; there is
much in her of the Arabian spirit: every year some Arabians
settle there, and 1 have met with Medina citizens who spoke
nearly as the upland Arabians.

1 was his captive, and mornings and evenings must present
myself before Abdullah. The village governor oppressed me
with cups of coifee, and his official chibuk, offered with comely
smiles of his black visage ; until the skeleton three days' hos-
pitality was ended. The soldiery were lodged in free quarters
at Ivheybar, where are many empty houses which the owners let
out in the summer months to the salesmen who arrive then
from Medina. Abdullah was lodged in one of the better houses,
the house of a black widow woman, whose prudent and beneficent
humour was very honourably spoken of in the country. If any
marketing nomads dismounted at her door, she received them
bountifully ; if any in the village were in want, and she heard
of it, she would send somewhat. Freely she lent her large
dwelling, for she was a loyal woman who thought it reason to
give place to the officer of the Dowla. Although a comely
person in her early middle age, yet she constantly refused to
take another mate, saying, ' She was but the guardian of the
inheritance for her two sous.' She already provided to give
them wives in the next years. The Kheybar custom is to
mortgage certain palm-yards for the bride-money ; but thus the
soil (which cannot bring forth an excessive usury) not seldom
slips, in the end, quite out of the owner's hands. Therefore this
honest negro wife imagined new and better ways : she frankly
sold two beleds, and rode down with the price to Medina ; and
bought a young Galla maiden, well disposed and gracious, for her
elder son's wife : and she would nourish the girl as a daughter
until they should both be of the age of marriage. The Kheya-
bara are wont to match with the (black) daughters of their village;
but the Galla women might be beloved even by white men.

Abdullah once called me to supper : he had a good Medina
mess of goat's flesh and f rench-beans. When we rose he smiled
to those about him and boasted " Rag Ullak! ' it is God's truth,'

12 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

seeing Khalil has eaten this morsel with me, I could not devise
any evil against him ! " Another time I came up weary in the
afternoon, when the soldiery had already drunk their coffee and
departed ; yet finding a little in the pot I set it on the coals, and
poured out and sipped it. — Abdullah, who sat there with one or
two more, exclaimed, " When I see Khalil drink only that cup,
wellah I cannot find it in my heart to wish him evil : " — this was
the half-humane black hypocrite !

The Nejumy, who — since a white man is the black people's
" uncle " — was called in the town Amm Mohammed, did not
forget me ; one forenoon I heard his pleasant voice at the stair
head : " Sheykh Khalil, sheykh Khalil, hi/ ! come, I want thee."
He led me to his house, which was in the next street, at the end
of a dark passage, from whence we mounted to his suffa. The
light, eth-thow, entered the dwelling room at two small case-
ments made high upon the clay wall, and by the open ladder-trap
to the roof : it was bare and rude. — " Sit down, sheykh Khalil,
this is my poor place, said he ; we live here like the Beduw, but
the Lord be praised, very much at our ease, and with plenty of
all things : " Amm Mohammed was dwelling here as a trader.
A Bishr woman was his housewife ; and she made us an excel-
lent dish of moist girdle- cakes, gors, sopped in butter and wild
honey. " This honey comes to me, said he, from the Beduw, in
my buying and selling, and I have friends among them who
bring it me from the mountains." The fat and the sweet [in
the Hebrew Scriptures — where the fat of beasts is forbidden to
be eaten — Fat things, milk and honey, or butter and honey,
oil olive and honey] are, they think, all-cure ; they comfort the
health of the weak-dieted. There is a tribe of savage men
upon the wide Jebel Rodwa (before Yanba), who " are very long
lived and of marvellous vigour in their extreme age ; and that is
(say the Arabs) because they are nourished of venison (el-bedim)
and wild honey." When we had eaten, "I and thou are now
brethren, said the good man ; and, sheykh Khali), what time
thou art hungry come hither to eat, and this house is now as
thine own : undo the door and come upstairs, and if I am not
within say to this woman, thou wouldst eat dates or a cake of
bread, and she will make ready for thee." He told me that at
first the negro villagers had looked upon me as a soldier of the
Dowla ; but he said to them, ' Nay, for were the stranger a
soldier he had gone to alight at the Siruan's or else at my beyt.'
When, the day after, they began to know me, there had been a
sort of panic terror among the black people. ' I was sdhar, they
said, a warlock, come to bewitch their village ' : and the hareem
said " Oh ! look ! how red he is ! "

MUHARRAM 13

-in Mohammed: "This is a f.-.-i-i .1,-iy (./'/</ et
shall we now go and visit the acquaintance ? " — We went from
house to house of his villa^' friends : but none of them, in their
high and holy day, had slain any head of cattle, — they are re-
puted niggards ; yet in every household where we came a mess
was set before us of girdle-bread sopped in samn. " I warn
thee, sheykh Khalil, said my friend, we must eat thus twenty
times before it is evening."

" In these days, whilst we are sending to Medina, said
Abdullah the Siruan, thou canst cure the sick soldiery ; we
have two at Umm Kida, another is here. Sirur, and you,
Salem, go with him, take your arms, and let Khalil see
Muharram." — " I cannot walk far." — " It is but the distance of
a gunshot from the Scfsdfa."

— We came thither and descended behind the figgera, into
another valley W. es-8illima, named thus because in the upper
parts there is much wild growth of slim acacia trees. The eyes
of the Aarab distinguish four kinds of the desert thorns : tdlh
(the gum-acacia), sdmmara, sillima and sidla ; the leaves of
them all are like, but the growth is diverse. The desert smiths
cut t6lh timber for their wood work, it is heavy and tough ; the
other kinds are too brittle to serve them. The sdmmara is
good for firewood ; it is sweet-smelling, and burns with a clear
heat leaving little ash, and the last night's embers are found
alive in the morning. They have boasted to me of this good
fuel, — "We believe that the Lord has given you many things
in your plentiful countries, but surely ye have not there the
sfirnmara ! " W. Sillima descends from the Harra beyond the
trachytic mount Atwa, and gives below the basalt headland
Khusshm es-Sefsdfa into W. Zeydteh, the valley of the greater
Kheybar village and the antique citadel. W. Sillima is here
a rusty fen, white with the salt-warp, summakha, exhaling a
sickly odour and partly overgrown with sharp rushes, el-girt,
which stab the shanks of unwary passengers. — Such is, to
the white man, the deadly aspect of all the valley-grounds of
Kheybar !

If you question with the villagers, seeing so much waste
bottom and barrenness about them, they answer, "There is
more already upon our hands than we may labour." The
summakha soil, which is not the worst, can be cured, if for two
or three seasons the infected salt-crusts be pared with the spade :
then the brackish land may be sowed, and every year it will
become sweeter. A glaze of salt is seen upon the small clay
bottoms in the Harra ; yet of the many springs of Kheybar,

14 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

which are warm and with some smack of sulphur, there is not
one brackish: they rise between certain underlying clays and
the basalt, which is fifty feet thick, at the edge of the figgera.
The large Kheybar valleys lie together, like a palm leaf, in the
Harra border : they are gashes in the lava-field — in what
manner formed it were not easy to conjecture — to the shallow
clays beneath. Where an underlying (sandstone) rock comes
to light it is seen scaly (burned) and discoloured.

— We came up by walled ways through palm grounds and
over their brook, to the village Umni Kida : this is Jeriat
W. Aly. The site, upon the high wady-bank of basalt, is
anqient, and more open and cheerful, and in a better air than
the home village. We ascended near the gateway to a suffa,
which was the soldiers' quarters ; the men's arms hanged at the
walls, and upon the floor I saw three pallets. — The Turkish
comrades bade us welcome in the hard manner of strangers
serving abroad at wages, and tendered their chibuks. Two of
them were those pale faces, which I had first seen in Kheybar ;
the third was Mohammed, a Kurdy, from some town near Tiflis
(in Russian Armenia). Muharram was a tall extenuated man,
and plainly European. He had worn out forty years in military
service in the Hejaz, about Medina and Mecca, and never the
better : I asked him where was his fustdn ? He answered
smiling, with half a sigh, " There was a time when we wore
the petticoat, and many of the Arnaut were prosperous men at
Medina ; but now they are dispersed and dead." He wore yet
his large tasseled red bonnet, which seemed some glorious
thing in the rusty misery of Kheybar ! His strength failed
him here, the fever returned upon him : I gave him rhubarb in
minute doses, and quinine. * :

* * * The guest in the Arabic countries . sees the good
disposition of his host, after three days, turned as the backside
of a garment. — Each morning, after I had presented myself to
the village tyrant at the kahwa, I went to breathe the air upon
the figgera above the Sefsafa. I might sit there in the winter
sun, without the deadly damps of the valley, to meditate my
time away ; and read the barometer unespied, and survey the
site of Kheybar, and the brick-red and purple-hued distance of
mountains in the immense Arabian landscape beyond. One
day having transcribed my late readings of the aneroid, I cast
down the old papers, and, lest the wind should betray me, laid
stones on them : but my vision never was good, and there were
eyes that watched me, though I saw no man. As I walked

A DANGEROUS WALK 15

there another d;iy a man upon ;i lionsc-tnp n, Kida,

fired his gun at, me. The morning afl'-r, seeing two IIHMI
approach with thoir matcli locks I retiirm-d to tin- vili
found Abd.illah sitting with malevolent looks. " What is this,
he said, that I hear of thee. ? — children of I 'nun Kida saw you
hii ry j);ipers, I know not what ! They have taken them up, and
carried t hem to the hamlet, where all the people were troubh -d ;
and a slieykh, a trusty man, has been over here to complain to
me. What were the papers ? [in their belief written full of en-
chantments :] — and now the sheykhs have solemnly burned
them." Besides a Beduwy had been to Abdullah accusing
the Nasniny * that he saw me sitting upon the Harra with a
paper in my hand '.

Abdullah told me, that as I returned yesterday, by the path,
through the plantations, two young men of Umm Kida sat
behind the clay walling with their matchlocks ready, and
disputed \vliether they should take my life; and said one to
the other, " Let me alone, and I will shoot at him : " but his
fellow answered, " Not now, until we see further ; for if his
blood were shed we know not whom it might hurt." Abdullah :
" What hast thou done, Khalil ? what is this that I hear of
thee? The chief persons come to me accusing thee ! and I do
tell thee the truth, this people is no more well-minded towards
thee. Observe that which I say to thee, and go no more
beyond the gates of the village ; — I say go not ! I may
protect thee in the village, in the daytime : by night go not
out of thy chamber, lest some evil befall thee ; and the blame
be laid upon me. For Ullah knoweth — and here the malevolent
fanaticism kindled in his« eyes — who is there might come upon
thee with his knife ! — a stroke, Khalil, and thou art dead !
But the slayer was not seen, and the truth of it might never be
known. Only in the day visit thine acquaintance, and sit in
friendly houses. I have said go not beyond the gates ; but if
thou pass them, and thou art one day slain, then am I clean of
it! Canst thou look through walling? a shot from behind
some of their (clay) walls may take thy life ; there are some
here who would do it, and that as lightly as they shoot at
crows, because thou art an alien, and now they have taken thee
for an enemy ; and that they have not done it hitherto, wellah
it was for my sake." * * *

* At first he [Amm Mohammed] called me often to eat
with him ; then seeing me bare of necessary things (Abdullah
had now my purse) he took me altogether to his house to live
with him, in the daytime. Some evenings we went abroad,—

16 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

'nedowwer (said he,) el-liaky wa el-k&hwa, — seeking pleasant
chat and coffee ', to friendly houses. At night, since his home
was but an upper chamber, I withdrew to sleep in Aman's
suffa. At each new sunrising I returned to him : after his
prayers we breakfasted, and when the winter sun began to cast
a little golden heat, taking up our tools, a crowbar, a spade
and a basket, we went forth to an orchard of his ; and all this
was devised by Mohammed, that I might not be divided from
him. He . carried also (for my sake) his trusty sword, and
issuing from the sordid village I breathed a free air, and found
some respite in his happy company, in the midst of many
apprehensions.

Amm Mohammed set himself to open a water-pit in a palm
ground of his next the troops' summer quarters ; the ground-
water lies about a spade deep in the valley bottom of Kheybar,
but the soil rising there and shallowing out under the figgera,
he must break down an arm's length through massy basalt. We
passed the days in this idle business : because he saw his guest
full of weariness he was uneasy when in my turn I took up
the bar. " Sit we down, sheykh Khalil, a breathing while !
ne'sma : nay, why make earnest matter of that which is but our
pastime, or what haste is there so all be ended before the
summer ? "

A good crowbar is worth at Kheybar five reals; their
(Medina) husbandmen' s-tools are fetched from the coast. The
upper shells of basalt were easy to be broken through : but next
lies the massy (crystalline) rock, which must be riven and rent
up by force of arms; and doubtless all the old spring-heads of
Kheybar have been opened thus ! — Seldom at this season there
arrived a hubt, or company of marketing nomads : then his
wife or son called home Amm Mohammed, and the good man
returned to the village to traffic with them.

Amm Mohammed — endowed with an extraordinary eyesight
— was more than any in this country, a hunter. Sometimes,
when he felt himself enfeebled by this winter's (famine) diet
of bare millet, he would sally, soon after the cold midnight,
in his bare shirt, carrying but his matchlock and his sandals
with him : and he was far off, upon some high place in the
Harra, by the day dawning, from whence he might see over the
wide vulcanic country. When on the morrow I missed the good
man, I sat still in his suffa, full of misgiving till his coming
home again ; and that was near mid-day. Only two or three
days of autumn rain had fallen hereabout, and the new blade
was hardly seen to spring; the gazelles and the wild goats
had forsaken this side of the Harra : Amm Mohammed there-

ANCIENT INSCRIPTK > 17

fore found nothing. — At Kheybar they name the stalker of
great ground game fjcmn'i* : *•//<'///, is the light hunter with hawk
and hound, to take the desert hare.

He led me with him sometime upon the Harra, to see certain
ancient inscriptions ; — they were in Kufic, scored upon the
basalt rock, and full of Ullah and Mohammed. Many old
Arabic inscriptions may be seen upon the scaly (sandstone)
rocks, which rise in the valley, half an hour below the place. I
found no more of heathen Arabic than two or three inscriptions,
each of a few letters. They are scored upon a terrace of basalt,
under the Khusshm es-Sefsafa, with images of animals: I
found the wild ox, but not the elephant, the giraffe, and other
great beasts of the African continent, which Aman told me
he had seen there. * * *

(Doughty describes the ruined village el-Gcreyeh, and the Husn,
or citadel rock. The villagers, and their ancient partnership in
the soil with the Beduins. The Medina soldiery.)

* * * In the third week of my being in this captivity at
Kheybar, the slave-spirited Abdullah wrote to the Pasha of
Medina. Since the village governor knew no letters, the black
sheykh Salih was his scrivener, and wrote after him : " Upon
such a day of the last month, when the gates of Kheybar were
opened in the morning, we found a stranger without, waiting to
enter. He told us that a Beduwy, with whom he arrived in the
night, had left him there and departed. When we asked him
what man he was ? he answered ' an Engleysy ' ; and he ac-
knowledged himself to be a Nasrany. And I, not knowing what
there might be in this matter have put the stranger in ward, and
have seized his baggage, in which we have found some books
and a paper from Ibn Rashid. So we remain in your Lordship's
obedience, humbly awaiting the commandments of your good
Lordship." — "Now well, said Abdullah; and seal it, Salih.
Hast thou heard this that I have written, Khalil ? "— " Write
only the truth. When was I found at your gates? I rode
openly into Kheybar." — " Nay, but I must write thus, or the

VOL. II. B

18 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

Pasha might lay a blame upon me and say, ' Why didst them
suffer him to enter ? ' — That Heteymy lodged in the place all
night, and he was a gomany ! also his thelul lay in the street,
and I did not apprehend him : — Oh God ! where was then my
wit ? I might [the thief murmured] have taken his drome-
dary ! Listen, everyone of you here present ! for the time to
come, ye are to warn me when any strangers arrive; that if there
be anything against them, they may be arrested immediately."

Abdullah had in these days seized the cow of an orphan, — for
which all the people abhorred him — a poor minor without de-
fence, that he might drink her milk himself : so he wrote another
letter to the Pasha, " I have sequestered a cow for arrears of
taxes, and will send her unto your lordship ; the beast is worth
fifteen reals at Kheybar, and might be sold for fifty at el-
Medina." In a third paper he gave up his account of the village
tithing to the Dowla : all the government exactions at Kheybar
were together 3600 reals. [For this a regiment of soldiers
must march every year to (their deaths at) Kheybar !]
Abdullah's men being not fully a score were reckoned in his
paysheet at forty. If any man died, he drew the deceased's
salary himself, to the end of his term of service. Once every
year he will be called to muster his asakar ; but then with some
easy deceit, as by hiring or compelling certain of the village,
and clothing them for a day or two, he may satisfy the easy
passing over of his higher officers ; who full of guilty bribes
themselves, look lightly upon other men's criminal cases.
Abdullah added a postscript. " It may please your honour to
have in remembrance the poor askars that are hungry and
naked, and they are looking humbly unto your good Lordship
for some relief." In thirty and two months they had not been
paid ! — what wonder though such wretches, defrauded by the
Ottoman government, become robbers ! Now they lifted up
their weary hearts to God and the Pasha, that. a new khtisna, or
' paymaster's chest of treasure ', from Stambul might be speedily
heard of at el-Medina. These were years of wasting warfare in
Europe ; of which the rumour was heard confusedly at this
unprofitable distance. So Abdullah sealed his letters, which had
cost him and his empressed clerk three days' labour, until their
black temples ached again.

These were days for me sooner of dying than of life ; and the
felonous Abdullah made no speed to deliver me. The govern-
ment affairs of the village were treated-of over cups of coffee ;
and had Salih not arrived betimes, Abdullah sent for him, with
authority. The unhappy sheykh with a leg short came then in
haste ; and the knocking of his staff might be heard through the

THE SIRUAN AT MEDINA I'.i

length of the street, whilst the audience sat in silence, and t Ju-
ry blood seemed to boil in the black visage of Abdullah.
When he came up, ' Why wast thou not here ere this, sheykh
Sulih ? ' he would say, in a voice which made the old mini
tremble ; Stilih answered nothing, only rattling his inkstand he
began to pluck out his reed pens. The village sheykh had no
leisure now to look to his own affairs ; and for all this pain he
received yearly from the government of Medina the solemn
mockery of a scarlet mantle : but his lot was now cast in with
the Dowla, which he had welcomed ; and he might lose all, and
were even in danger of his head, if Ibn Eashid entered again.

It is the custom of these Orientals, to sit all day in their coffee
halls, with only a resting-while at noon. To pass the daylight
hours withdrawn from the common converse of men were in
their eyes unmanly ; and they look for no reasonable fellowship
with the hareem. Women are for the house-service ; and only
when his long day is past, will the householder think it time to
re-enter to them. Abdullah drank coffee and tobacco in his
soldiers' kaliwa ; where it often pleased him to entertain his
company with tales of his old prowess and prosperity at Medina :
and in his mouth was that round kind of utterance of the Arabic
coffee-drinkers, with election of words, and dropping with the
sap of human life. Their understanding is like the rnoon, full
upon this side of shining shallow light ; but all is dimness and
deadness upon the side of science. He told us what a gallant
horseman he had been, — he was wont to toss a javelin to the
height, wellah, of the minarets in Medina ; and how he went
like a gentleman in the city, and made his daily devout prayers
in the hdram ; nor might he ever be used to the rudeness of
tbeliil riding, because nature had shaped him a gentle cavalier,
lie had ridden once in an expedition almost to el-Hejr ; and as
they returned he found an hamlet upon a mountain, whose in-
habitants till that day, wellah, had not seen strangers. He had
met with wild men, when he rode to Yanba, — that was upon the
mountain Rodwa ; those hill -folk [Jeheyna] besides a cotton
loin-cloth, go naked. One of them an ancient, nearly ninety
years of age, ran on before his horse, leaping like a wild goat
among the rocks ; and that only of his good will, to be the
stranger's guide. He boasted he had bought broken horses for
little silver, and sold them soon for much ; so fortunate were
his stars at Medina. In the city he had a chest four cubits long ;
a cubit deep and wide ; and in his best time it was full of reals,
and lightly as they came to his hand, he spent them again. He
had a Galla slave-lad at Medina who went gaily clad, and had

20 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

sweetmeats and money, so that he wondered ; but upon a day,
his infamy being known, Abdullah drew a sword and pursued
his bondsman in the street and wounded him, and sold him the
day after to one of his lovers, for five reals. — It seems that
amongst them a householder may maim or even slay his bond-
servant in his anger and go unpunished, and the law is silent ;
for as Moses said, HE is HIS CHATTEL. * * *

' * The Kheyabara inured to the short tyranny of the
Beduins were not broken to this daily yoke of the Dowla. They
had no longer sanctuary in their own houses, for Abdullah
summoned them from their hearths at his list ; their hare em
were beaten before their faces ; — and now his imposition of
firewood ! Abdullah sent for the chief murmurers of the village ;
and looking gallantly, he sought with the unctuous words of
Turkish governors to persuade them. " Are not the soldiers
quartered, by order of the Dowla, upon you in this village ?
and I say, sirs, they look unto you for their fuel, — what else
should maintain this kahwa fire ? which is for the honour of
Kheybar, and where ye be all welcome. Listen ! — under his
smiles he looked dangerous, and spoke this proverb which
startled me : — the military authority is what ? It is like a
stone, whereupon if anyone fall he will be broken, but upon whom
the Dowla shall fall he will be broken in pieces. I speak to you
as a friend, the Doivla lias a mouth gaping wide [it is a criminal
government which devours the subject people], and that cries
evermore hdt-hdt-hdt, give ! give ! — And what is this ? 0 ye
the Kheyabara, I am mild heretofore ; I have well deserved of
you : but if ye provoke me to lay upon you other burdens, ye
shall see, and I will show it you ! It had been better for you
that you had not complained for the wood ; for now I think to
tax your growing tobacco. — I have reckoned that taking one
field in eight, I shall raise from Kheybar a thousand reals, and
this I have left to you free hitherto. And whatsoever more I
may lay upon you, trust me Sirs it will be right well received ;
and for such I shall be highly commended at Medina."

Kheybar is three sheykh's suks. — Atewy, a sturdy carl, chief
of the upper suk under the Husn, answered for himself and his,
that they would no longer give the wood.' Abdullah sent
for him ; but Atewy would not come. Abdullah imprisoned
two of Atewy's men : Atewy said it should not be so ; and the
men of his suk caught up bucklers and cutlasses, and swore to
break up the door and release them. Half of the Ageyl askars
at Kheybar could not, for sickness, bear the weight of their

NEGRO RIOT I. 21

\\v:ipi>ns ; ;in«l the strong negroes, when their Mood was moved,
contemned the Siruan's pitiful band of feeble wretches.
Abdullah sent out his bully Sirfir, with the big brazen voice, to
threaten the rioters : but the Galla coward was amazed at their
settled countenance, and I saw him sneak home to Abdullah ;
who hearing that the town was rising, said to the father of his
village housewife, " And wilt thou also forsake me ? " The
man answered him, " My head is with thy head ! '

Abdullah who had often vaunted his forwardness to the
death, in any quarrel of the Dowla, now called his men to arm ;
he took down his pair of horseman's pistols from the wall, with
the ferocity of the Turkish service, and descended to the street ;
determined * to persuade the rioters, and if no wellah he would
shed blood.' — He found the negroes' servile heat somewhat
abated : and since they could not contend with ' the Dowla ',
they behaved themselves peaceably: Abdullah also promised
them to release the captives.

Abdullah re-entered the kahwa, — and again he summoned
Atewy ; who came now, — and beginning some homely excuses,
" Well, they cared not, he said, though they gave a little wood,
for Abdullah's sake, only they would not be compelled."
Abdullah, turning to me, said " Wheu ! now hast thou seen,
Khalil, what sheytans are the Kheyabara ! and wast thou not
afraid in this hurly-burly ? I am at Kheybar for the Dowla,
and these soldiers are under me ; but where wert thou to-day,
if I had not been here ? " — " My host's roof had sheltered me,
and after that the good will of the people." — 'Now let the
Kheyabara, he cried, see to it, and make him no more turmoils ;
or by Ullah he would draw on his boots and ride to Medina !
and the Pasha may send you another governor, not easy as I
am, but one that will break your backs and devour you : and
as for me, wellah, I shall go home with joy to mine own house
and children.' * * *

* Abdullah, who knew the simple properties of numbers,
told them upon his fingers in tens ; but could not easily keep
the count, through his broken reckoning, rising to thousands. —
And devising to deliver a Turkish bill of his stewardship, he
said, with a fraudulent smile ; * We may be silent upon such
and such little matters, that if the Pasha should find a fault in
our numbers, we may still have somewhat in hand wherewith to
amend it. The unlettered governor made up these dispatches
in the public ear, and turning often to his audience he enquired,
* Did they approve him, Sirs?' and only in some very privy
matter he went up with sheykh Sulih to indite upon his house-

22 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

terrace. Abdullah hired Dakhil (not the Menhel), one of the
best of the black villagers, to carry his government budget, for
four reals, to Medina. Dakhil, who only at Kheybar, besides
the Nejumy, was a hunter, fared on foot : and because of the
danger of the way he went clad (though it was mid-winter) in
an old (calico) tunic ; he left his upper garment behind him. i

Many heavy days must pass over my life at Kheybar, unti
Dakhil's coming again; the black people meanwhile looked
with doubt and evil meaning upon the Nasrany, — because the
Pasha might send word to put me to death. Felonous were
the Turkish looks of the sot Abdullah, whose robber's mind
seemed to be suspended betwixt his sanguinary fanaticism and
the dread remembrance of Jidda and Damascus : the brutal
Sirur was his privy counsellor. — Gallas have often an extreme
hatred of this name, Nasrany : it may be because their border
tribes are in perpetual warfare with the Abyssinian Christians.

Abdullah had another counsellor, whom he called his ' uncle ',
— Aly, the religious sheykh, crier to prayers, and the village
schoolmaster. Looking upon Aly's mannikin visage, full of
strange variance, I thought he might be a little lunatic ; — of
this deformed rankling complexion, and miserable and curious
humour, are all their worst fanatics. I enquired of Amm
Mohammed ; and ho remembered that Aly's mother had died
out of her mind. Aly was continually breathing in the ass's
ears of Abdullah that the Nasrany was adu ed-din, ' enemy of
the faith ; ' and ' it was due to the Lord (said he) that I should
perish by the sword of the Moslemin. Let Abdullah kill me !
cries the ape-face ; and if it were he durst not himself, he might
suffer the thing to be done. And if there came any hurt of it,
yet faithful men before all things must observe their duty to
Ullah.' — The worst was that the village sheykh Salih, other-
wise an elder of prudent counsel, put-to his word that Aly had
reason !

The Nejumy hearing of the counsels of Abdullah cared not
to dissemble his disdain. He said of Aly, " The hound, the
slave ! and all the value of him [accounting him in his contempt
a bondman] is ten reals : and as for the covetous fool and very
ass Abdullah, the father of him bought the dam of him for
fifty reals ! " — But their example heartened the baser spirits of
the village, and I heard again they had threatened to shoot at
the kafir, as I walked in the (walled) paths of their plantations.
Amm Mohammed therefore went no more abroad, when we
were together, without his good sword. And despising the
black villagers he said, " They are apes, and not children of
Adam ; Oh ! which of them durst meddle in my matter ? were

AMM MOHAMMED, OSTRICH OR CAMKL 13

it only of a clog or a chicken in my house ! But sheykh Khalil
eats with me every day in one dish." The strong man added,
' He would cut him in twain who laid an hand on Khalil ; and
if any of them durst sprinkle Khalil with water, he would
sprinkle him with his blood ! *

Abdullah, when we sat with him, smiled with all his Turkish
smiles upon the Nejumy; and Amm Mohammed smiled as good
to his black face again. "But (quoth he) let no man think
that I am afraid of the Dowla, nor of sixty Dowlas ; for I may
say, Abdullah, as once said the ostrich to the Beduwy, ' If
thou come to take camels, am I not a bird ? but comest thou
hither a-fowling, behold, Sir ! I am a camel.* So if the Aarab
trouble me I am a Dowlany, a citizen of the illustrious Medina,
— where I may bear my sword in the streets [which may only
officers and any visiting Beduw], because I have served the
Dowla. And, if it go hard with me upon the side of the Dowla,
I am Harlnj, and may betake me to the Fcrni (of the Beny
Amr) ; that is my mother's village, in the mountains [upon the
middle derb\ between the Haramejai : there I have a patrimony
and a house. The people of the Ferra are my cousins, and
there is no Dowla can fetch me from thence, neither do we
know the Dowla ; for the entry is strait as a gateway in the
jebel, so that three men might keep it against a multitude. :> —
And thus the Nejumy defended my solitary part, these days
and weeks and months at Kheybar ; — one man against a
thousand ! Yet dwelling in the midst of barking tongues, with
whom he must continue to live, his honest heart must some-
times quail, (which was of supple temper, as in all the nomad
blood). And so far he gave in to the popular humour that
certain times, in the eyes of the people, he affected to shun
me : for they cried out daily upon him, that he harboured
the Nasrfiny ! — " Ah ! Khalil, he said to me, thou canst not
imagine all their malice ! "

Neither was this the first time that Mohammed en-Nejumy
had favoured strangers in their trouble. — A Medina tradesman
was stripped and wounded in the wilderness as he journeyed to
Kheybar ; and he arrived naked. The black villagers are in-
hospitable; and the Medina citizen, sitting on the public benches,
waited in vain that some householder would call him. At last
Ahmed went by ; and the stranger, seeing a white man, — one
that (in this country) must needs be a fellow citizen of Medina,
said to him, " What shall I do, my townsman ? of whom might
I borrow a few reals in this place, and buy myself clothing ? "
Ahmed : " At the street's end yonder is sitting a tall white man !
nsk him : " — that was Mohammed — '• Ah ! Sir, said the poor

24 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

tradesman, finding him ; them art so swarthy, that I had well
nigh mistaken thee for a Beduwy ! " Amm Mohammed led
him kindly to his house and clothed him : and the wounded
man sojourned with his benefactor and Ahmed two or three
months, until they could send him to Medina. "And now
when I come there, and he hears that I am in the city, said
Amm Mohammed, he brings me home, and makes feast and
rejoicing." — This human piety of the man was his thank-
offering to the good and merciful Providence, that had pros-
pered him and forgiven him the ignorances of his youth !

Another year, — it was in the time of Ibn Rasbid's govern-
ment— when the Nejumy was buying and selling dates and
cotton clothing in the harvest-market at Kheybar, some Annezy
men came one day haling a naked wretch, with a cord about
his neck, through the village street : it was an Heteymy ; and
the Beduins cried furiously against him, that he had with-
held the khuwa, ten reals ! and they brought him to see if
any man in Kheybar, as he professed to them, would pay for
him ; and if no, they would draw him out of the town and
kill him. The poor soul pleaded for himself, " The Nejumy
will redeem me : " so they came on to the Rahabba, where
was at that time Mohammed's lodging, and the Heteymy
called loudly upon him. Mohammed saw him to be some
man whom he knew not : yet he said to the Annezy, " Loose
him." — "We will not let him go, unless we have ten reals
for him." — " But I say, loose him, for my sake." — " We will
not loose him." — " Then go up Ahmed, and bring me ten reals
from the box." " I gave them the money, said Mohammed,
and they released the Heteymy. I clothed him, and gave him
a waterskin, and dates and flour for the journey, and let him
go. A week later the poor man returned with ten reals, and
driving a fat sheep for me."

Mohammed had learned (of a neighbour) at Medina to be a
gunsmith, and in his hands was more than the Arabian in-
genuity ; his humanity was ever ready. A Beduwy in the fruit
harvest was bearing a sack of dates upon Mohammed's stairs ;
his foot slipped, and the man had a leg broken. Mohammed,
with no more than his natural wit, which they call kdwas, set
the bone, and took care of him until he recovered ; and now the
nomad every year brings him a thankoffering of his samn and
dried milk. Mohammed, another time, found one wounded and
bleeding to death : he sewed together the lips of his wound with
silken threads, and gave him a hot infusion of saffron to drink,
the quantity of a fenjeyn, two or three ounces, which he tells me
will stay all haemorrhages. The bleeding ceased, and the man
recovered.

CHAPTER II

TIII-: MEDINA LIFE AT KHEYBAR

A MM MOHAMMED'S father was a Kurdy of Upper Syria, from
the village Beylan,near Antioch (where their family yet remain);
their name is in that language Yelduz, in Arabic Nejiimy, [of
H'JUI, star]. The old Nejumy was purveyor in Medina to the
Bashy Bazuk. He brought up his provision convoys himself,
by the dangerous passage from Yanba : the good man had
wedded an Harb woman, and this delivered him from their
nation ; moreover he was known upon the road, for his manly
hospitable humour, to all the Beduw. He received, for his
goods, the soldier's bills on their pay (ever in arrear), with some
abatement ; which paper he paid to his merchants at the cur-
rent rate. And he became a substantial trader in the Holy
City.

He was a stern soldier and severe father ; and dying he left
to his three sons, who were Bashy Bazuk troopers, no more than
the weapons in their right hands and the horses ; — he had six
or eight Syrian hackneys in his stable. He left them in the
service of the Dowla, and bade them be valiant : he said that
this might well suffice them in the world. All his goods and the
house he gave to their mother, besides a maintenance to the
other women ; and he appointed a near kinsman, to defend her
from any recourse against her of his sons. — The horses they sold,
and the price was soon wasted in riot by Mohammed, the elder
of the young brethren : and then, to replenish his purse, he fell
to the last unthrift of gaming. And having thus in a short
novelty misspent himself, his time and his substance, he found
himself bare : and he had made his brethren poor.

When the Bashy Bazuk were disbanded, Mohammed and
Ahmed took up a humble service ; they became dustmen of the
temple, and carried out the daily sweeping upon asses, for which
they had eightpence daily wages. Besides they hired themselves
as journeymen, at sixpence, to trim the palms, to water the soil, to

26 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

dig, to build walls in the orchards. Weary at length of his
illiberal tasks, Mohammed turned to his father's old friends, and
borrowed of them an hundred reals. He became now a sales-
man of cotton wares in the suk ; but the daily gain was too little
to maintain him ; and in the end he was behind the hand more
than four hundred reals.

With the few crowns which remained in his bag he bought a
broken mill-horse, and went with her to Kheybar ; where the
beast browsing (without cost to him) in the wet valleys, was bye
and bye healed ; and he sold her for the double in Medina.
Then he bought a cow at Kheybar, and he sold his cow in the city
for double the money. And so going and coming, and begin-
ning to prosper at Kheybar, he was not long after master of a
cow, a horse, and a slave ; which he sold in like manner, and
more after them : — and he became a dealer in clothing and dates
in the summer market at Kheybar. When in time he saw him-
self increased, he paid off two hundred reals of his old indebted-
ness. Twelve years he had been in this prosperity, and was now
chief of the autumn salesmen (from Medina), and settled at
Kheybar: for he had dwelt before partly at el-Hayat and in
Medina.

The year after the entering of the Dowla, Ahmed came to live
with him. He could not thrive in the Holy City ; where passing
his time in the coffee houses, and making smoke of his little
silver, he was fallen so low that Mohammed sent the real which
paid for his brother's riding, in a returning hubt, to Kheybar ;
— where arriving in great languor he could but say, ' His con-
solation was, that his good brother should bury him ! ' — Moham-
med, with the advantage of his summer trading, purchased
every year (the villagers' right in) a beled for forty or fifty reals.
He had besides three houses, bought with his money, and a
mare worth sixty reals. His kine were seven, and when they
had calved, he would sell some, and restore one hundred reals
more to his old creditors. A few goats taken up years ago in
his traffic with the nomads, were become a troop ; an Heteymy
client kept them with his own in the khala. Also his brother
had prospered : " See, said Mohammed, he lives in his own
house ! Ahmed is now a welfaring trader, and has bought him-
self a beled or two." * * *

* * * Mohammed, though so worthy a man and amiable, was
a soldier in his own household. When I blamed him he said,
" I snib my wife because a woman must be kept in subjection,
for else they will begin to despise their husbands." He chided

A CHIDING KATIIKK 27

every hour his patirnt and diligent Bcdiiwi;i as ////•/</ /////// (£
' of cursed kind.' Ho had a mind to take another wife r.
than tins to his liking; for, he said, she was not fair; and in
hope of more offspring, though she had thrice borne him
children in four or five years, — but two were dead in the sickly
air of Kheybar : " a wife, quoth he, should be come of good kin,
and be liberal." Son and housewife, he chid them continually ;
only to his guest, Amm Mohammed was a mild Arabian. Once
I saw him — these are the uncivil manners of the town — rise to
strike his son ! The Beduwia ran between them to shelter her
step-son, though to her the lad was not kind. I caught the
Nejumy's arm, yet his force bruised the poor woman ; — and
" wellah, she said, smiling in her tears to see the tempest
abated, thy hand Mohammed is heavy, and I think has broken
some of my bones." Haseyn bore at all times his father's hard
usage with an honest submission.

We passed-by one day where Haseyn ploughed a field, and,
when I praised the son's diligence, Mohammed smiled ; but in
that remembering his hard custom he said, " Nay, he is idle, he
will play with the lads of the village and go a gunning." —
Each morning when Haseyn returned to his father's sufi'a, his
father began his chiding : " What ! thou good-for-nothing one,
should a young man lie and daze till the sun rise over him ? "
Hardly then his father suffered him to sit down a moment, to
swallow the few dates in his hand ; but he rated him forth to
his labour, to keep cows in the Hdlhal, to dig, to plough, to
bring in the ass, to seek his father's strayed mare, to go about
the irrigation. Week, month and year, there was no day when
Haseyn might sit at home for an hour; but he must ever avoid
out of his father's sight. Sometimes Mohammed sent him out,
before the light, fasting, far over the Harra, with some of the
village, for wood ; and the lad returned to break his fast at
mid-afternoon. If any day his father found his son in the
village before the sun was set, he pursued him with outrageous
words, in the public hearing ; " Graceless ! why come home so
soon ? (or, why earnest thou not sooner ?) Ha ! stand not,
tlior ! steer, ox, to gape upon me, — enliaj! remove out of my
sight — thou canst run fast to play ; now, irkud ! ijri ! run
about thy business. Is it to such as thee I should give a wife
to-year?" Haseyn: "What wouldst thou have me to do,
father ? "_" Out of my sight, kbr ! Ullah punish that face!"
and he would vomit after him such ordures of the lips (from
the sink of the soldiers' quarters at Medina), akerdt, kharra,
tirras, or he dismissed his son with laanat Ullah alcyk, ' God's
curse be with thee.' Haseyn returned to the house, to SUP,

28 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

little before nightfall. Then his father would cry: " Ha !
unthrift, thou hast done nothing to-day but play in the Halhal !
— he stares upon me like an ox, bdkr ! " — " Nay but father I
have done as thou badest me." — "Durst thou answer me,
chicken! now make haste to eat thy supper, sirra, and be-
gone." Haseyn, a lad under age, ate not with his father and
the guest ; but after them of that which remained, with his
father's jara, whom he called, in their manner, his mother's
sister, khdlaty.

Doubtless Mohammed had loved Haseyn, whilst he was still
a child, with the feminine affection of the Arabs ; and now he
thought by hardness, to make his son better. But his harsh
dealing and cries in the street made the good man to be
spoken against in the negro village ; and for this there was
some little coldness betwixt him and his brother Ahmed.
But the citizen Ahmed was likewise a chider and striker,
and for such his Kheybar wife, Mohammed's housewife's sister,
had forsaken him : he had a town wife at Medina. Why, I
asked, was she not here to keep his house ? Ahmed: " I bring
my wife to inhabit here ! only these blacks can live at Kheybar,
or else, we had taken it from them long ago ! " Ahmed's children
died in their youth, and he was unmindful of them : " Ahmed
has no feeling heart," said his brother Mohammed. I counselled
Amm Mohammed to have a better care for his son's health,
and let him be taught letters. " Ay, said his father, I would
that he may be able to read in the koran, against the time
of his marriage, for then he ought to begin to say his prayers
(like a man)."

* Ahmed he would say is half-witted, for he spends all that
ever he may get in his buying and selling, for kahwa and
dokhan. Mohammed [in such he resembled the smiths' caste]
used neither. " Is that a wise man, he jested, who will drink
coffee and tan his own bowels ? " Yet Ahmed must remember,
amongst his brother's kindness, that the same was he who had
made him bare in the beginning : even now the blameworthy
brother's guilts were visited upon his head, and the generous
sinner went scatheless ! — Mohammed, wallowing in the riot of
his ignorant youth at Medina, was requited with the evil which
was sown by the enemy of mankind. Years after he cured
himself with a violent specific, he called it in Arabic " rats'
bane ", which had loosened his teeth ; a piece of it that
Mohammed showed me was red lead. Though his strong nature
resisted so many evils and the malignity of the Kheybar fevers,
the cruel malady (only made inert) remained in him with
blackness of the great joints. And Ahmed living with him

VlMKICE TO ULLAII
at Khoybar and extending the indi^-nt liand to his brother's

mess, received from Mohammed's beneficent hand the contagion
which had wasted him from the state of an halo man to his
present infirmity of body.

The rude negro villagers resorted to Ahmed, to drink coffee
and hear his city wisdom ; and he bore it very impatiently 1 li if
his brother named him mejnun in the town. " Sheykh Khalil,
he said to me, how lookest thou upon sheykh Mohammed V "
" I have not found a better man in all." — " But he is fond and
childish." When Ahmed sickened to death in the last pesti-
lence Mohammed brought a bull to the door, and vowed a vow
to slaughter him, if the Lord would restore his brother. Ahmed
recovered: and then Mohammed killed the bull, his thank-
offering, and divided the flesh to their friends ; — and it was much
for a poor man ! In these days Mohammed killed his yearly
sacrifice of a goat, which he vowed once when Haseyn was sick.
He brought up his goat when the beasts came home in the
evening ; and first taking coals in an earthen censer he put on a
crumb of incense, and censed about the victim. I asked where-
fore he did this ? he answered : " That the sacrifice might be well
pleasing to Ullah ; and do ye not so ? " He murmured prayers,
turning the goat's head towards Mecca; and with his sword he
cut her throat. When he heard from me that this was not our
custom, — every man to kill his own sacrifice, he seemed to
muse in himself, that we must be but a faint-hearted people.

One early morning, his son going about the irrigation had
found a fox drowned in our well. — Haseyn flung it out upon the
land ; and when we came thither, and could not at first sight
find this beast, " No marvel, quoth Mohammed, for what is
more sleighty than a fox ? It may be he stiffened himself,
and Haseyn threw him out for dead : " — but we found the
hosenny cast under some nettles, dead indeed. From the snout
to the brush his fur was of such a swart slate colour as the
basalt figgera ! only his belly was whitish. Amm Mohammed
drew the unclean carcase out of his ground, holding a foot in a
handful of palm lace.

I told the good man how, for a fox-brush sheykhs in my be led
use to ride furiously, in red mantles, upon horses — the best of
them worth the rent of some village — with an hundred yelling
curs scouring before them ; and leaping over walls and dykes
they put their necks and all in adventure : and who is in at the
hosenny 's death he is the gallant man. For a moment the
subtil Arabian regarded me with his piercing eyes as if he
would say, " Makest thou mirth of me ! " but soon again relenting

30 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

to his frolic humour, "Is this, he laughed, the chevying of
the fox ? " — in which he saw no grace. And the good Medina
Moslem seemed to muse in spirit, 'Wherefore had the Lord
endowed the Yahud and Nasara with a superfluity of riches,
to so idle uses ? ' The wolf no less, he said, is a sly beast : upon
a time, he told me, as he kept his mother's goats at the Ferra
in his youth, and a (Harb) maiden was herding upon the hill-
side with him, he saw two wolves approach in the plain ; then
he hid himself, to watch what they would do. At the foot of
the rocks the old wolf left his fellow ; and the other lay down to
await him : that wolf ascended like an expert hunter, pausing,
and casting his eyes to all sides. The trooping goats went feed-
ing at unawares among the higher crags ; and Mohammed saw
the wolf take his advantage of ground and the wind, in such
wise that a man might not do better. * Grey legs ' chose out
one of the fattest bucks in the maiden's herd, and winding
about a rock he sprang and bit the innocent by the throat :—
Mohammed's shot thrilled the wolf's heart at the instant ; and
then he ran in to cut the bleeding goat's throat (that the flesh
might be lawful meat). * * *

* * * Mohammed was a perfect marksman. When we came
one morning to our well-ground, and he had his long matchlock
in his hand, there sat three crows upon a sidr (apple-thorn)
tree, that cumbered our ears with their unlucky krd-krd. " The
cursed ones ! " quoth Amm Mohammed, and making ready his
gun, he said he would try if his eyesight were failing : as he
levelled the crows flew up, but one sat on, — through which he
shot his bullet from a wonderful distance. Then he set up a
white bone on the clay wall, it was large as the palm of my
hand, and he shot his ball through the midst from an hundred
paces. He shot again, and his lead pierced the border of the
former hole ! Mohammed gave the crow to some Kheyabara,
who came to look on ; and the negro villagers, kindling a fire of
palm sticks, roasted their bird whole, and parted it among them.
— " Like will to like ! quoth the Nejumy, and for them it is good
enough."

He had this good shooting of an uncommon eyesight, which
was such, that very often he could see the stars at noonday :
his brother, he said, could see them, and so could many more.
He told me he had seen, by moments, three or four little stars
about one of the wandering stars, [Jupiter's moons !] I asked
then, "Sawest thou never a wandering star horned like the
moon ? " — " Well, I have seen a star not always round, but like
a blade hanging in the heaven." — Had this vision been in

BLOOD-MONEY 31

European star-gazers, the Christian generations had not so long
waited for the tube of Galileo ! [to lay the first stone — hewn
without hands — of the indestructible building of our sen-rices].
Mohammrd saw the moon always very large, and the whole
body at once : he was become in his elder years long-
sighted. * * *

* * * The remembrance of their younger brother, who had
been slain by robbers as he came in a company from Medina to
visit his brethren at Kheybar, was yet a burning anguish in
Mohammed's breast; — until, with his own robust hands, he
might be avenged for the blood! A ghrazzu of Monyora, Billi
Aarab, and five times their number, had set upon them in the
way : the younger Nejumy, who was in the force of his years,
played the lion amongst them, until he fell by a pistol shot.
M6ngora men come not to Kheybar; therefore Mohammed
devised in his heart that in what place he might first meet with
any tribesman of theirs, he would slay him. A year after, he
finding one of them, the Nejumy led him out, with some
pretence, to a desert place ; and said shortly to him there, " 0
thou cursed one ! now will I slay thee with this sword." —
" Akhs ! said the Beduwy, let me speak, Sir, why wilt thou kill
me ? did I ever injure thee ? " — " But thou diest to-day, for the
blood of my brother, whom some of you in a ghrazzu have
slain, in the way to Kheybar." — " The Lord is my witness !
that I had no hand in it, for I was not among them." — " Yet
shall thy blood be for his blood, since thou art one of them." —
"Nay, hear me, Mohammed en-Nejumy ! and I will tell thee
the man's name, — yea by Him which created us ! for the man is
known to me who did it ; and he is one under my hand. Spare
now my life, and as the Lord liveth I will make satisfaction, in
constraining him that is guilty, and in putting-to of mine own,
to the estimation of the niidda, 800 reals." Mohammed, whose
effort is short, could no more find in his cooling mood to
slaughter a man that had never displeased him. He said then,
that he forgave him his life, upon this promise to send him the
blood-money. So they made the covenant, and Mohammed let
him go.

— "That cursed Belluwy ! I never saw him more (quoth he),
but now, — ha! wheresoever I may meet with any of them, I
will kill him." I dissuaded him — " But there is a wild-fire in
my heart, which cannot be appeased till I be avenged for the
death of my brother." — " Were it not better if you take any
of their tribesmen, to bind him until the blood be redeemed ? "
But Amm Mohammed could not hear this; the (South) Arabian

32 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

custom is not to hold men over to ransom : but 'either they kill
their prisoner outright, or, giving him a girby with water and
God's curse, they let him go from them. " Ruhli, they will say,
depart thou enemy! and perish, may it please God, in the
khala." They think that a freeman is no chattel and cannot be
made a booty. Women are not taken captive in the Arabian
warfare, though many times a poor valiant man might come by
a fair wife thus, without his spending for bride money.

Mohammed answered, "But now I am rich — the Lord be
praised therefore, what need have I of money? might I but
quench this heart-burning ! " — " Why not forgive it freely, that
the God of Mercies may forgive thee thy offences." — " Sayest
thou this ! — and sheykh Khalil I did a thing in my youth, for
which my heart reproaches me ; but thou who seemest to be a
man of (religious) learning declare unto me, whether I be guilty
of that blood. — The Bashy Bazuk rode [from Medina] against
the Ateyba, and I was in the expedition. We took at first
much booty : then the Beduw, gathering from all sides [they
have many horsemen], began to press upon us, and our troop
[the soldiers ride but slowly upon Syrian hackneys] abandoned
the cattle. The Aarab coming on and shooting in our backs,
there fell always some among us ; but especially there was a
marksman who infested us. He rode upon a mare, radif, and
his fellow carried him out galloping on our flank and in ad-
vance : then that marksman alighted, behind some bush, and
awaited the time to fire his shot. When he fired, the horse-
man, who had halted a little aloof, galloped to take him up :
they galloped further, and the marksman loaded again. At
every shot of his there went down horse or rider, and he killed
my mare : then the aga bade his own slave take me up on his
horse's croup. 'Thou 0 young man, said he, canst shoot,
gallop forth with my lad and hide thee ; and when thou seest
thy time, shoot that Ateyby, who will else be the death of us
all.' — ' Wellah Captain, I would not be left on my feet, the
troop might pass from me.' — ' That shall not be, only do this
which I bid thee.'

" We hastened forward, said Mohammed, when those Beduins
came by on the horse : we rode to some bushes, and there I
dismounted and loaded carefully. The marksman rode beyond
and went to shroud himself as before ; he alighted, and I was
ready and shot at the instant. His companion who saw him
wounded, galloped to take him up, and held him in his arms on
the saddle, a little while ; and then cast him down, — he was
dead ! and the Arabs left pursuing us." I asked, ' Wherefore,
if he doubted to kill an enemy in the field, had he taken service

BAM IV i;A/J K KXl'EDITIO: 33

with the soldiery ? ' — " All ! it was lor t6ma : I was yet young
and ignorant."

Ainin Mohammed lirul tlio blood of another sucli man-
slaughter on his mind ; but lie spoke of it without discomfort.
In a new raid lie pursued a Beduwy lad \vlio was Hying on foot,
to take his matchlock from him, — which might be worth twelve
reals; the weled, seeing himself overtaken by a horseman of
the Dowla, fired back his gun from the hip, and the ball passed
through the calf of Mohammed's leg, who ' answered the
inelaun, as he said, trawf ! — with a pistol shot: the young
tribesman fell grovelling, beating his feet, and wallowed
matching the sand in dying throes. Mohammed's leg grew
cold, and only then he felt himself to be wounded : he could
not dismount, but called a friend to take up the Beduwy's gun
for him. Mohammed's father (who was in the expedition) cut
off his horseman's boot, which was full of blood, and bound up
the hurt : and set him upon a provision camel and brought him
home to Medina ; and his wound was whole in forty days.

He showed me also that a bone had been shot away of his
left wrist ; that was in after years. — Amm Mohammed was
coming up in a convoy of tradesmen from Medina, with ten
camel-loads of clothing for Kheybar. As they journeyed, a
strong ghrazzu of Harb met with them : then the passengers
drove their beasts at a trot, and they themselves hasting as
they could on foot, with their guns, fired back against the
enemies. They ran thus many miles in the burning sun, till
their strength began to give out and their powder was almost
spent. The Beduw had by this taken the most of the trades-
men's loaded camels. Mohammed had quitted his own and the
camel of a companion, when a ball shattered the bone of his
left forearm. " I saw him, he said, who shot it ! I fired at
the melaun again, and my bullet broke all his hand." — The
Aarab called now to the Nejumy (knowing him to be of their
kindred), " What ho ! Mohammed son of our sister ! return
without fear, and take that which is thine of these camels."
He answered them, " I have delivered mine already, "and they,
" Go in peace." — I asked " How, being a perfect marksman, he
had not, in an hour, killed all the pursuers." — " But know,
Klialil, that in this running and fighting we fire almost without
taking sight." * * *

* The delay of Abdullah's messenger to Medina, was a
cloud big with discomfort to me in this darkness of Kheybar.
One morning I said to Amm Mohammed at our well-labour,

VOL. II. C

34: WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

" What shall I do if ill news arrive to-day ? Though yon put
this sword in my hands, I could not fight against three
hundred." — " Sit we down, said the good man, let us consider,
Khalil : and now thou hast said a word, so truly, it has made
my heart ache, and I cannot labour more ; kf/ak, let us home
to the house," — though half an hour was not yet spent. — He
was very silent, when we sat again in his snffa : and " Look, he
said, Khalil, if there come an evil tiding from the Pasha, I will
redeem thee from Abdullah — at a price, wellah as a man buys
a slave ; it shall be with my mare, she is worth sixty reals, and
Abdullah covets her. He is a melaun, a very cursed one,
Khalil ; — and then I will mount thee with some Beduins, men
of my trust, and let thee go." — " I like not the felon looks of
Abdullah." — " I will go and sound him to-day ; I shall know
his mind, for he will not hide anything from me. And Khalil,
if I see the danger instant I will steal thee away, and put thee
in a covert place of the Harra, where none may find thee ; and
leave with thee a girby and dates, that thou mayest be there
some days in security, till news be come from Medina, and I
can send for thee, or else I may come to thee myself."

The day passed heavily : after supper the good man rose,
and taking his sword and his mantle, and leaving me in the
upper chamber, he said he would go and ' feel the pulse of the
melann' : he was abroad an hour. The strong man entered
again with the resolute looks of his friendly worth : and sitting
down, as after a battle, he said, " Khalil, there is no present
danger ; and Abdullah has spoken a good word for thee to-day,
— * Khalil, it seems, does not fear Ullah; he misdoubts me,
and yet I have said it already, — if the Pasha write to me to cut
off KhaliPs head, that I will mount him upon a thelul and let
him go ; and we will set our seals to paper, and I will take
witness of all the people of Kheybar, — to what ? that Khalil
broke out of the prison and escaped. — Tell Khalil, I have not
forgotten es-Sham and Jidda ; and that I am not afraid of a
Pasha, who as he came in yesterday may be recalled to-morrow,
but of Stambul, and wellah for my own life.' '

The post arrived in the night. Mohammed heard of it,
and went over privily to Dakhil's house, to enquire the news.
" There is only this, said the messenger, that the Pasha sends
now for his books."

On the morrow I was summoned to Abdullah, who bade
sheykh Salih read me the Medina governor's letter, where
only was written shortly, " Send all the stranger's books, and
the paper which he brought with him from Ibn Rashid ; you
are to send the cow also." The Siruan bade me go with his

THE ENGLEYS OF THE SI I \!.LK<;IAN< K

hostess to a closet where my bags lay, and bring out tin- hooks
and papers, and leave nob one remaining. This I did, only
asking him to spare my loose papers, since the Pasha had not
expressly demanded them, — but he would not. I said, " I will
also write to the Pasha ; and here is my English passport which
I will send with the rest." "No! " he cried, to my astonish-
ment, with a voice of savage rage ; and ' for another word he
would break his chibuk over my head ', he cursed me, and
cursed "the Engleys, and the father of the Engleys." — The
villain would have struck me, but he feared the Nejumy and
Dakhil, who were present. "Ha, it is thus, I exclaimed, that
thou playest with my life ! " Then an hideous tempest burst
from the slave's black mouth ; " This Nasrany ! he yelled, who
lives to-day only by my benefit, will chop words with me ; Oh
wherefore with my pistol, wherefore, I say, did I not blow out
his brains at the first ? — wellah as ever I saw thee ! "

Amm Mohammed as we came home said, " Abdullah is a
melaun indeed ; and, but we had been there, thou hadst not
escaped him to-day." — How much more brutish I thought in
my heart had been the abandonment of the Levantine con-
sulate ! that, with a light heart, had betrayed my life to so
many cruel deaths !

Even Amm Mohammed heard me with impatience, when I
said to him that we were not subject to the Sultan. — The
Sultan, who is Khcdif (calif ), successor to the apostle of Ullah,
is the only lawful lord, they think, of the whole world ; and all
who yield him no obedience are dsytn, revolted peoples and
rebels. The good man was sorry to hear words savouring, it
seemed to him, of sedition, in the mouth of Khalil. He
enquired, had we learned yet in our (outlying) countries to
maintain bands of trained soldiery, such as are the askars of the
Sooltan ? I answered, that our arts had armed and instructed
the Ottoman service, and that without us they would be naked.
" It is very well, he responded, that the Engleys, since they be
not asyin, should labour for the Sooltan."

When I named the countries of the West, he enquired if
there were not Moslemin living in some of them. I told him,
that long ago a rabble of Moghrebies had invaded and possessed
themselves of the florid country of Andalus. — Andalusia was a
glorious province of Islam : the Arabian plant grew in the
Titanic soil of Europe to more excellent temper and stature ;
and there were many "bull/id voices among them, in that land
of the setting sun, gladdened with the genial wine. Yet the
Arabs decayed in the fruition of that golden soil, and the
robust nephews of them whom their forefathers had dispos-

36 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

sessed, descending from the mountains, reconquered their own
country. As I said this, " Wellah guwiyin ! then they must be
a strong people, answered Amrn Mohammed. Thou, Khalil,
hast visited many lands ; and wander where thou wilt, since it
is thy list, only no more in the Peninsula of the Arabs (Jezirat
el-Arab). Thou hast seen already that which, may suffice thee ;
and what a lawless waste land it is ! and perilous even for us
who were born there ; and what is this people's ignorance and
their intolerance of every other religion. Where wilt thou be
when God have delivered thee out of these troubles? that if
ever I come into those parts I might seek thee. Tell me
where to send my letter, if ever I would write to thee ; and
if ' I inscribe it Shei/kh Khalil, Bded el-Enqleys, will that find
thee?"

" Here is paper, a reed, and ink : Abdullah would not have
thee write to the Pasha; but write thou, and I will send the
letter by Dakhil who will not deny me, and he returns to-
morrow. See, in writing to the Pasha, that thou lift him up
with many high-sounding praises." — " I shall write but plainly,
after my conscience." — " Then thou art mejnun, and that con-
science is not good, which makes thee afraid to help thyself in
a danger." — " Tell me, is the Pasha a young man of sudden
counsels, or a spent old magistrate of Stambul ? " — " He is a
grey-beard of equitable mind, a reformer of the official service,
and for such he is unwelcome to the ill-deserving. Yet I would
have thee praise him, for thus must we do to obtain anything ;
the more is the pity." I wrote with my pencil in English, —
for Mohammed told me there are interpreters at Medina. I
related my coming down with the Haj, from Syria, to visit
Medain Salih ; and, that I had since lived with the Beduw, till
I went, after a year, to Hayil ; from whence Ibn Rashid, at
my request, had sent me hither. I complained to the Pasha-
governor of this wrongful detention at Kheybar, in spite of my
passport from a Waly of Syria ; also certain Beduins of the
Dowla coming in, who knew me, had witnessed to the truth of
all that I said. I demanded therefore that I might proceed
upon my journey and be sent forward with sure persons.

I was sitting in the soldiers' kahwa, when Abdullah wrote
his new letter to the Pasha, " My humble duty to your lord-
ship : I send now the stranger's books and papers. I did
send the cow to your lordship by some Aarab going down to
Medina ; but the cow broke from them, and ran back to Khey-
bar : she is now sick, and therefore I may not yet send her." —
" Hast thou written all this, sheykh Salih ? — he will not be
much longer, please Ullah, Bashat el-Medina; for they say

ENCHANTMKN 37

another is coining." No man ln-nring liis fable could forbear
laughing; only the Sinnm looked sadly upon it, for the cow
yielded him every day a bowlful of milk, in this low time at
Kheybar. Abdullah set his seal to the letters, and delivered
them to Dakhil, who <It'i>:ut«'<l before noon. Amm Mohammed,
as he was going, put a piece of silver (from me) in Dakhil's
hand, and cast my letter, with my British passport, into the
worthy man's budget, upon his back, who feigned thus that
he did not see it : the manly villager was not loath to aid
n stranger (and a public guest,) whom he saw oppressed in
his village by the criminal tyranny of Abdullah.

His inditing the letter to Medina had unsettled Abdullah's
brains, so that he fell again into his fever : " Help me quickly !
he cries, where is thy book, sheykh Salih ; and you Beduins
sitting here, have ye not some good remedies in the desert? "
Siilib pored over his wise book, till he found him a new caudle
and enchantment. — Another time I saw Salih busy to cure a
mangy thelfil ; he sat with a bowl of water before him, and
mumbling thereover he spat in it, and mumbled solemnly and
spat many times ; and after a half hour of this work the water
was taken to the sick beast to drink. — Spitting (a despiteful
civil defilement) we have seen to be some great matter in
their medicine. — Is it, that they spit thus against the malicious
jftn ? Parents bid their young children spit upon them : an
Arabian father will often softly say to the infant son in his
arms, " Spit upon babu ! spit them, my darling."

CHAPTER III

GALLA-LAND. MEDINA LORE

MANY night hours when we could not sleep, I spent in dis-
coursing with my sick Galla comrade, the poor friendly-minded
Aman. When I enquired of the great land of the Gallas,
" El-Hdbasli" quoth he, is the greatest empire of the werld ;
for who is there a Sooltan to be compared with the Sooltan
of el-Habash ! " — " Well, we found but a little king, on this
side, when the Engleys took his beggarly town, Mdgdala"
— Aman bethought him, that in his childhood when he was
brought down with the slave drove they had gone by this
Magdala. * That king, he said, could be no more than a governor
or pasha ; for the great Sooltan, whose capital is at the distance
of a year's journey, where he inhabits a palace of ivory. The
governors and lieutenants of his many provinces gather an
imperial tribute, — that is at no certain time ; but as it were
once in three or four years.'

This fable is as much an article of faith with all the Gallas,
as the legend which underlies our most beliefs ; and may rise
in their half-rational conscience of a sort of inarticulate argu-
ment : — * Every soil is subject to rulers, there is therefore a
Euler of Galla-land, — Galla-land the greatest country in all
the world ; but the Sultan of the greatest land is the greatest
Sultan : also a Sultan inhabits richly, therefore that greatest
Sultan inhabits the riches of the (African) world, and his palace
is all of ivory ! ' Aman said, ' The country is not settled in vil-
lages ; but every man's house is a round dwelling of sticks and
stubble, large and well framed, in the midst of his ground,
which he has taken up of the hill-lands about him. Such faggot-
work may stand many years [; but is continually in danger to
be consumed by fire, in a moment]. They break and sow as
much soil as they please ; and their grain is not measured for
the abundance. They have great wealth of kine, so that he is
called a poor man whose stock is only two or three hundred.

THE GALLAS' MANNER OF UKU

Tlu-ir oxen are big-bodi»-d, and have great horns: the Gallas
milk only so many of their cattle as may suffice them for
drinking and for butter; they drink beer also, which tlu-y
in, -ike of their plenty of corn. Though it be a high and hilly
land, a loin-cloth [as anciently in the Egyptian and Ethiopian
countries] is their only garment; but such is the equal temper
of the air that they need no more. The hot summer never
grieves them ; in the winter they feel none other than a whole-
some freshness. In their country are lions, but Ullah's mercy
has slaked the raging of those terrible wild beasts ; for the lions
sicken cc<rif other day with fever, and else they would destroy the
icorld ! The lions slaughter many of their cattle ; but to man-
kind they do no hurt or rarely. A man seeing a lion in the
path should hold his way evenly without faintness of heart, and
so pass by him ; not turning his eyes to watch the lion, for
that would waken his anger. There are elephants and giraffes ;
their horses are of great stature.' — I have heard from the slave
drivers that a horse may be purchased in the Galla country for
(the value of) a real !

' In Galla-land there is no use of money ; the people, he
said, have no need to buy anything : they receive foreign trifles
from the slave dealers, as beads and the little round in-folding
tin mirrors. Such are chiefly the wares which the drivers bring
with them, — besides salt, which only fails them in that largess
of heaven which is in their country. A brick of salt, the load
of a light porter, is the price of a slave among them. That
salt is dug at Suakim (by the Red Sea, nearly in face of Jidda),
six months distant. The Gallas are hospitable to strangers,
who may pass, where they will, through their country. When
there is warfare between neighbour tribes, the stranger is safe
in what district he is ; but it* he would pass beyond, he must
cross the infested border, at his peril, to another tribe ; and
he will again be in surety among them. The Galla country is
very open and peaceable ; and at what cottage the stranger
may alight, he is received to their plenteous hospitality. They
ask him whether he would drink of their ale or of their milk V
Some beast is slaughtered, and they will prive him the flesh,
which he can cook for himself, [since the Gallas are raw-flesh
eaters].

' They have wild coffee trees in their country, great as oaks ;
and that coffee is the best : the bean is very large. They take
up the fallen berries from the ground, and roast them, with
samn. Coffee is but for the elders' drinking, and that seldom :
they think it becomes not their young men to use the pithless
caudle drink. The women make butter, rocking the milk in the

40 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

shells of great gourds : they store all their drink in such vessels.
Grain-gold may be seen in the sand of the torrents ; but there
are none who gather it. Among them [as in Arabia] is a smiths'
caste ; the Galla people mingle not with them in wedlock.
The smiths receive payment for their labour, in cattle.' I did
not ascertain from Aman what is their religion : ' he could not
tell ; they pray, he said, and he thought that they turn them-
selves toward Mecca.' He could not remember that they had
any books among them.

Aman had been stolen, one afternoon as he kept his father's
neat, by men from a neighbour tribe. The raiders went the
same night to lodge in a cottage, where lived a widow woman.
When the good woman had asked the captive boy of his parent-
age, she said to the guests, that the child's kindred were her
acquaintance, and she would redeem him with an hundred oxen ;
but they would not. A few days later he was sold to the slave
dealer : and began to journey in the drove of boys and girls, to
be sold far off in a strange land. These children with the cap-
tive young men and maidens march six months, barefoot, to the
Red Sea: the distance may be 1200 miles. Every night they
come to a station of the slave-drivers, where they sup of flesh
meat and the country beer. Besides the aching weariness of
that immense foot-journey, they had not been mishandled.

' Of what nation were the slave drivers ? ' — this he could not
answer : they were white men, and in his opinion Moslemin ;
but not Arabians, since they were not at home at Jidda, which
was then, and is now, the staple town of African slavery, for the
Turkish Empire : — Jidda where are Prankish consuls ! But you
shall find these worthies, in the pallid solitude of their palaces,
affecting (great Heaven !) the simplicity of new-born babes,—
they will tell you, they are not aware of it ! But I say again,
in your ingenuous ears, Jidda is the staple town of the Turkish
slavery, OR ALL THE MOSLEMIN ARE LIARS.

— At length they came down to the flood of the Nile, which
lay in a great deep of the mountains, and were ferried over upon
a float of reeds and blown goat-skins. Their journey, he said,
is so long because of the hollowness of the country. For they
often pass valley-deeps, where, from one brow, the other seems
not very far off ; yet in descending and ascending they march
a day or two to come thither. Their aged men in Galla-land
use to say, that * the Nile comes streaming to them in deep
crooked valleys, from bare and unknown country many months
distant.'

" Aman, when I am free, go we to Galla-land ! it will not be
there as here, where for one cow we would give our left hands ! "

WARFARK ON TIM- OALU BORDKi: -II

The poor (lalla h;ul rais.-d himsrlf upon his dhow, with a, mflan-
choly distraction, and smiling he seemed to see his country
again : he told nu>. his own name in the Galla tongue, when he
was a child, in his (lalla home. I asked if no anger was left in
his heart, against those who had stolen and sold his life to ser-
vitude, in the ends of the earth. " Yet one thing, sheykh Khali 1,
has recompensed me, — that I remained not in ignorance with
the heathen ! — Oh the wonderful providence of Ullah ! whereby
I am come to this country of the Apostle, and to the knowledge
of the religion ! Ah, mightest thou be partaker of the same !
— yet I know that is all of the Lord's will, and this also shall
be, in God's good time ! " He told me that few Gallas ever
return to their land, when they have recovered their freedom. —
" And wilt thou return, Aman ? " " Ah ! he said, my body is
grown now to another temper of the air, and to another manner
of living."

There is continual warfare on the Galla border with the
(hither) Abyssinians ; and therefore the Abyssinians suffer none
to go over with their fire-arms to the Gallas. The Gallas are war-
like, and armed with spear and shield they run furiously upon
their enemies in battle. — In the Gallas is a certain haughty
gentleness of bearing, even in land of their bondage.

Aman told me the tale of his life, which slave and freed-man
he had passed in the Hejaz. He was sometime at Jidda, a
custom-house watchman on board ships lying in the road ; the
most are great barques carrying Bengal rice, with crews of that
country under English captains. Aman spoke with good re-
membrance of the hearty hospitality of the " Nasara " seamen.
One day, he watched upon a steamship newly arrived from
India, and among her passengers was a " Nasrany ", who " sat
weeping — weeping, and his friends could not appease him ".
Aman, when he saw his time, enquired the cause; and the
stranger answered him afflictedly, " Eigh me ! I have asked of
the Lord, that I might visit the City of His Holy House, and
become a Moslem : is not Mecca yonder ? Help me, thou good
Moslem, that I may repair thither, and pray in the sacred
places ! — but ah ! these detain me." When it was dark Aman
hailed a wherry ; and privily he sent this stranger to land, and
charged the boatman for him.

The Jidda waterman set his fare on shore ; and saw him
mounted upon an ass, for Mecca, — one of those which are driven
at a run, in a night-time, the forty and five miles or more be-
twixt the port town and the Holy City. — When the new day
was dawning, the "Frenjy" entered Mecca! Some citizens,
the first he met, looking earnestly upon the stranger stayed to

42 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

ask him, " Sir, what brings thee hither ? — being it seems a
Nasrany ! " He answered them, " I was a Christian, and I have
required it of the Lord, — that I might enter this Holy City and
become a Moslem ! " Then they led him, with joy, to their
houses, and circumcised the man : and that renegade or traveller
was years after dwelling in Mecca, and in Medina. — Am an
thought his godfathers had made a collection for him ; and that
he was become a tradesman in the suk. — Who may interpret
this and the like strange tales ? which we may often hear related
among them !

Aman drank the strong drink which was served out with his
rations on shipboard; and in his soldiering life he made (secretly)
with his comrade, a spirituous water, letting boiled rice fer-
ment : the name of it is sitbiat and in the Hejaz heat they think
it very refreshing. But the unhappy man thus continually
wounding his conscience, in the end had corroded his infirm
health also, past remedy. — When first he received the long
arrears of his pay, he went to the slave dealers in Jidda, and
bought himself a maiden, of his own people, to wife, for fifty
dollars. — They had but a daughter between them : and another
time, when he removed from Mecca to Jidda, the child fell
from the camel's back ; and of that hurt she died. Aman
seemed not, in the remembrance, to feel a father's pity ! His
wife wasted all that ever he brought home, and after that he put
her away : then she gained her living as a seamstress, but died
within a while ; — "the Lord, he said, have mercy upon her ! "
— When next he received his arrears, he remained one year idle
at Mecca, drinking and smoking away his slender thrift in the
coffee houses, until nothing was left ; and then he entered this
Ageyl service.

The best moments of his life, up and down in the Hejaz, he
had passed at Tayif. " Eigh ! how beautiful (he said) is et-
Tayif ! " He spoke with reverent affection of the Great-sherif
[he died about this time], a prince of a nature which called forth
the perfect good will of all who served him. Aman told with
wonder of the sherif's garden [the only garden in Desert
Arabia !] at Tayif, and of a lion there in a cage, that was meek
only to the sherif. All the Great-sherif's wives, he said, were
Galla women ! He spoke also of a certain beneficent widow at
Tayif, whose bountiful house stands by the wayside ; where she
receives all passengers to the Arabian hospitality.

Since his old " uncle " was dead, Aman had few more hopes
for this life, — he was now a broken man at the middle age ;
and yet he hoped in his " brother ". This was no brother by

" THE NASARA ARE BORN OF THE SKA " 43

nature, but a negro once his it-How servant : and such are by
the benign custom of the Arabian household accounted brethren,
lie heard that his negro brother, now a freed-imm, was living at
.lerusnK'in ; and he had a mind to go up to Syria and seek him,
if the Lord would enable him. Amun was dying of a slow con-
sumption and a vesical malady, of the great African continent,
little known in our European art of medicine : — and who is
infirm at Kheybar, he is likely to die. This year there remained
only millet for sick persons' diet : " The [foster] God forgive
me, said poor Amfm, that I said it is as wood to eat." With the
pensive looks of them who see the pit before their feet, in the
midst of their days, he sat silent, wrapt in his mantle, all day in
the sun, and drank tobacco. — One's life is full of harms, who is
a sickly man, and his fainting heart of impotent ire, which
alienates, alas ! even the short human kindness of the few
friends about him. At night the poor Galla had no covering
from the cold ; then he rose every hour and blew the fire and
drank tobacco.

The wives of the Kheyabara were very charitable to the poor
soldiery : it is a hospitable duty of the Arabian hareem towards
all lone strangers among them. For who else should fill a man's
girby at the spring, or grind his corn for him, and bring in fire-
wood ? None offer them silver for this service, because it is
of their hospitality. Only a good wife serving some welfaring
stranger, as Ahmed, is requited once or twice in the year with
a new gown-cloth and a real or two, which he may be willing to
give her. Our neighbour's wife, a goodly young negress, served
the sick Amau, only of her womanly pity, and she sat ofttimes
to watch by him in our suffa. Then Jummar (this was her
name) gazed upon me with great startling eyes ; such a strange-
ness and terror seemed to her to be in this name ' Nasrany ' !
One day she said, at length, A ndakom hareem, ft? f be there
women in your land ? ' — " Ullah ! (yes forsooth), mothers,
daughters and wives ; — am I not the son of a woman : or dost
thou take me, silly woman, forwcled cth-thtb, a son of the wolf?"
— " Yes, yes, I thought so : but wellah, Khalil, be the Nasara
born as we ? ye rise not then — out of the sea ! " — When I told
this tale to Amm Mohammed he laughed at their fondness.
" So they would make thee, Khalil, another kind of God's
creature, the sea's offspring ! this foolish people babble without
understanding themselves when they say SEA : their * sea ' is
they could not tell what kind of monster ! " And Jummar
meeting us soon after in the street, must hang her bonny floe
head to the loud mirth of Amm Mohammed : for whom I was
hereafter welcd cth-thib; and if I were any time unready at his

44 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

dish, he would say pleasantly, "Khalil, them art not then weled
eth-thib I " A bystander said one day, as I was rolling up a flag
of rock from our mine, Met fi hail, ' there is no strength.*
Mohammed answered, " Nevertheless we have done somewhat,
for there helped me the son of the wolf." "I am no wolfling,
I exclaimed, but weyladak, a son of thine." "Wellah!
answered the good man, surprised and smiling, thou art my
son indeed."

Kurds, Albanians, Gallas, Arabs, Negroes, Nasrany, we were
many nations at Kheybar. One day a Beduwy oaf said at
Abdullah's hearth, " It is wonderful to see so many diversities
of mankind ! but what be the Nasara ? — for since they are not
of Islam, they cannot be of the children of Adam." I answered,
" There was a prophet named Noah, in whose time God drowned
the world ; but Noah with his sons Sem, Ham, Yafet, and their
wives, floated in a vessel : they are the fathers of mankind.
The Kurdies, the Turks, the Engleys, are of Yafet ; you Arabs
are children of Sem ; and you the Kheyabara, are of Ham, and
this Bishy." — " Akhs ! (exclaimed the fellow) and thou speak
such a word again — ! " Abdullah : "Be not sorry, for I also
(thy captain) am of Ham." The Bishy, a negro Ageyly, was
called by the name of his country (in el- Yemen) the W. Bishy
[in the opinion of some Oriental scholars " the river Pison " of
the Hebrew scriptures, v. Die alte Geographic Arabiens], It
is from thence that the sherif of Mecca draws the most of his
(negro) band of soldiery, — called therefore el-Bishy^ and they
are such as the Ageyl. This Yemany spoke nearly the Hejaz
vulgar, in which is not a little base metal ; so that it sounds
churlish-like in the dainty ears of the inhabitants of Nejd.

We heard again that Muharram lay sick ; and said Abdullah,
"Go to him, Khalil ; he was much helped by your former
medicines." — I found Muharram bedrid, with a small quick
pulse : it was the second day he had eaten nothing ; he had
fever and visceral pains, and would not spend for necessary
things. I persuaded him to boil a chicken, and drink the broth
with rice, if he could not eat ; and gave him six grains of
rhubarb with one of laudanum powder, and a little quinine, to
be taken in the morning.

The day after I was not called. I had been upon the Harra
with Amm Mohammed, and was sitting at night in our chamber
with Aman : we talked late, for, the winter chillness entering
t our open casement, we could not soon sleep. About mid-
night we were startled by an untimely voice ; one called loudly
in the corner of our place, to other askars who lodged there,

MUIAUUAArs DKATII

* Abel u 11. -ill bad*1 them come to him.' All was horror at Khcybar,
,iiid I thought tlie post mi^ht bo arrived i'rom Mediim, with an
order for my execution. I spoke to Amdn, who sat up blowing
the embers, to lean out of the casement and fn<|uin- of them
what it was. Arnau looking out said, EIJ l.lnihar, yd, 'Ho,
there, what tidings?' They answered him Horn.-what, and
said Annul, withdrawing his head, " Ulhih, i/nrkamliu, 'May
the Lord have mercy upon him,' — they say Muliarram is dead,
and they are sent to provide for his burial, and for the custody
of his goods.' — " I have lately given him medicines ! and what
if this graceless people now say, ' Khalil killed him ' ; if any of
them come now, we will make fast the door, and do thou lend
me thy musket." — " Khalil, said the infirm man sitting at the
fire, trust in the Lord, and if thou have done no evil, fear not :
what hast thou to do with this people ? they are hounds, apes,
oxen, and their hareem are witches : but lie down again and
sleep."

I went in the morning to the soldiers' kahwa and found
only the Siruan, who then arrived from Muharram's funeral.
" What is this ? Khalil, cries he, Muharram is dead, and they
say it was thy medicines : now, if thou know not the medicines,
give no more to any man. — They say that you have killed him,
and they tell me Muharram said this before he died. [I after-
wards ascertained from his comrades that the unhappy man
had not spoken at all of my medicines.] Mohammed el-Kurdy
says that after you had given him the medicine you rinsed
your hands in warm water." I exclaimed in my haste,
" Mohammed lies ! " — a perilous word. In the time of my being
in Syria, a substantial Christian was violently drawn by the
Mohammed people of Tripoli, where he lived, before the kady,
only for this word, uttered in the common hearing ; and he had
but spoken it of his false Moslem servant, whose name was
Mohammed. The magistrate sent him, in the packet boat, to
be judged at Beyrut ; but we heard that in his night passage,
of a few hours, the Christian had been secretly thrust over-
board ! — Abdullah looked at me with eyes which said ' It is
death to blaspheme the Neby ! ' — "Mohammed, I answered,
the Kurdy, lies, for he was not present." — " I cannot tell,
Khalil, Abdullah said at last with gloomy looks, the, man is
dead ; then give no more medicines to any creatnn ; " and the
askars now entering, he said to them, " Khalil is ai- anirry man,
for this cause of Muharram ; — speak we of other matter."

There came up Mohammed the Kurdy and the Egyptian :
they had brought over the dead and buried man's goods, who
yesterday at this time was living amongst them ! — his pallet,

46 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

his clothes, his red cap, his water-skin. Abdullah sat down to
the sale of them ; also, 2|- reals were said to be owing for the
corpse-washing and burying. Abdullah enquired, ' What of
Muharram's money ? for all that he had must be sent to his
heirs ; and has he not a son in Albania ? ' The dead man's
comrades swore stoutly, that they found not above ten reals in
his girdle. Sinlr : " He had more than fifty ! Muharram was
rich." The like said others of them (Aman knew that he had
as much as seventy reals). Abdullah : " Well, I will not enter
into nice reckonings; — enough, if we cannot tell what has
become of his money. — Who will buy this broidered coat, that
is worth ten reals at Medina ? " One cried " Half a real."
Sirtir : " Three quarters ! " A villager : " I will give two
krush more." Abdullah : " Then none of you shall have this ;
I reserve it for his heirs. What comes next ? a pack of cards : —
(and he said with his Turkish smiles) Muharram whilst he lived
won the most of his money thus, mesquin ! — who will give any-
thing?— I think these were made in Khalil's country. The
picture upon them [a river, a wood, and a German church] is
what, Khalil ? Will none buy ?— then Khalil shall have them."
— " I would not touch them." They were bidding for the sorry
old gamester's wretched blanket and pallet, and contending for
his stained linen when I left them.

If a deceased person be named in the presence of pious
Mohammedans they will respond, * May the Lord have mercy
upon him ! ' but meeting with Ahmed in the path by the burial
ground, he said, " Muharram is gone, and he owed me two reals,
may Ullah confound him ! " — I was worn to an extremity ; and
now the malevolent barked against my life for the charity
which I had shown to Muharram ! Every day Aly the ass
brayed in the ass's ears of Abdullah, * It was high time to put
to death the adversary of the religion, also his delaying [to kill
me] was sinful : ' and he alleged against me the death of
Muharram. I saw the Siruan's irresolute black looks grow
daily more dangerous : " Ullah knows, I said to the Nejumy,
what may be brooding in his black heart : a time may come
when, the slave's head turning, he will fire his pistols on me."
— " Thou earnest here as a friend of the Dowla, and what cause
had this ass-in-office to meddle at all in thy matter, and to make
thee this torment ? Wellah if he did me such wrong, since
there is none other remedy in our country, I would kill him and
escape to the Ferra." Amm Mohammed declared publicly
' His own trust in sheykh Khalil to be such that if I bade him
drink even a thing venomous, he would drink it ; ' and the like
said Aman, who did not cease to use my remedies. The better

A DOWLAT EXPEDITION TO KK-IMATH 47

sort of Kheyabara now said, that ' Muharram was not dead of
my medicines, but come to the end of his days, he departed by
the decree of Ullah.' * * *

* * * Mohammed had ridden westward, in the Bashy Bazfik
expeditions as far as Yanba ; he had ridden in Nejd with
Turkish troops to the Wahuby capital, er-Rifith. That was for
some quarrel of the sherif of Mecca : they lay encamped before
the Nejd city fifteen days, and if Ibn Saud had not yielded their
demands, they would have besieged him. The army marched
over the khala, with cannon, and provision camels ; and he said
they found water in the Beduin wells for all the cattle, and to
fill their girbies. The Arabian deserts may be passed by armies
strong enough to disperse the resistance of the frenetic but
unwarlike inhabitants ; but they should not be soldiers who
cannot endure much and live of a little. The rulers of Egypt
made war twenty years in Arabia ; and they failed finally be-
cause they came with great cost to possess so poor a country.
The Roman army sent by Augustus under Aelius Gallus to
make a prey of the chimerical riches of Arabia Felix was
11,000 men, Italians and allies. They marched painfully over
the waterless wastes six months ! wilfully misled, as they sup-
posed, by the Nabateans of Petra, their allies. In the end of
their long marches they took Nejran by assault : six camps
further southward they met with a great multitude of the
barbarous people assembled against them, at a brookside. In
the battle there fell many thousands .of the Arabs ! and of the
Romans and allies two soldiers. The Arabians fought, as men
unwont to handle weapons, with slings, swords and lances and
two-edged hatchets. The Romans, at their furthest, were only
two marches from the frankincense country. In returning
upwards the general led the feeble remnant of his soldiery,
in no more than sixty matches, to the port of el-Hejr. The
rest perished of misery in the long and terrible way of the
wilderness : only seven Romans had fallen in battle ! — Surely
the knightly Roman deserved better than to be afterward dis-
graced, because he had not fulfilled the dreams of Caesar's avarice !
Europeans, deceived by the Arabs' loquacity, have in every age a
fantastic opinion of this unknown calamitous country.

Those Italians looking upon that dire waste of Nature in
Arabia, and grudging because they must carry water upon
camels, laid all to the perfidy of their guides. The Roman
general found the inhabitants of the land * A people unwarlike,
half of them helping their living by merchandise, and half of
them by robbing ' [such they are now]. Those ancient Arabs

48 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

wore a cap, and let their locks grow to the full length : the
most of them cut the beard, leaving the upper lip, others went
unshaven. — " The nomads living in tents of hair-cloth are
troublesome borderers," says Pliny, [as they are to-day !]
Strabo writing from the mouth of Gallus himself, who was his
friend and Prefect of Egypt, describes so well the Arabian
desert, that it cannot be bettered. "It is a sandy waste, with
only few palms and pits of water : the thorn [acacia] and the
tamarisk grow there ; the wandering Arabs lodge in tents, and
are camel graziers." * * *

* * * The Sir u an had bound Amm Mohammed for me, since
there was grown this fast friendship between us, saying, "I
leave him in thy hands, and of thee I shall require him again ; "
— and whenever the Nejumy went abroad I was with him. The
villagers have many small kine, which are driven every morn-
ing three miles over the figgera, to be herded in a large bottom
of wet pasture, the Hdlhal, a part of W. Jellas. I went one day
thither with Amm Mohammed, to dig up off-sets in the thickets
of unhusbanded young palms. The midst of the valley is a
quagmire and springs grown up with canes. The sward is not
grass, though it seem such, but a minute herb of rushes. This
is the pasture of their beasts ; though the brackish rush grass,
swelling in the cud, is unwholesome for any but the home-born
cattle. The small Yemen kine, which may be had at Medina
for the price of a good sheep, will die here : even the cattle of
el-Hayat, bred in a drier upland and valued at twelve to fifteen
reals, may not thrive at Kheybar ; and therefore a good Khey-
bar cow is worth thirty reals. In the season of their passage
plenty of water-fowl are seen in the Halhal, and in summer-
time partridges. In these thickets of dry canes the village herd-
boys cut their double pipes, mizamtr. Almost daily some head
of their stock is lost in the thicket, and must be abandoned
when they drive the beasts home at evening ; yet they doubt
not to find it on the morrow. The village housewives come
barefoot hither in the hot sun to gather palm sticks (for firing).

Mohammed cut down some young palm stems, and we dined
of the heart or pith-wood, jumm&r, which is very wholesome ;
the rude villagers bring it home for a sweetmeat, and call it, in
their negro gibes, * Kheybar cheese.' Warm was the winter
sun in this place, and in the thirsty heat Amm Mohammed
shewed me a pit of water; — but it was full of swimming
vermin and I would not drink. "Khalil, said he, we are not

THE HURDA 49

so nice," and with lixwilliih-! 1m laid himself down upon his
manly breast and drank a hearty draught. In the beginning
of the Hiilhal we found scored upon a rock in ancient Arabic
letters the words Ma/n't/ cl-Wdi, which was interpreted by our
(unlettered) coffee-hearth scholars 'the cattle marches'. A
little apart from the way, is a site upon the figgera yet named
>'///• cr-lliurallu. There is a spring of their name in Medina;
Henakieh pertained of old to that Annezy tribe, (now far in the
north) : and ' there be even now some households of their line-
age '. Besides kine, there are no great cattle at Kheybar ; the
few goats were herded under the palms by children or geyatin.

Another day we went upon the Harra for wood. Amm
Mohammed, in his hunting, had seen some sere sammara trees ;
they were five miles distant. We passed the figgera in the chili
of the winter morning and descended to the W. Jellas ; and
Haseyn came driving the pack-ass. In the bottom were wide
plashes of ice-cold water. " It will cut your limbs, said Moham-
med, you cannot cross the water." I found it so indeed ; but
they were hardened to these extremities, and the lad helped me
over upon his half-drowned beast. Mohammed rode forward
upon his mare, and Haseyn drove on under me with mighty
strokes, for his father beckoned impatiently. To linger in such
places they think perilous, and at every blow the poor lad
shrieked to blBJdhash some of the infamous injuries which his
father commonly bestowed upon himself ; until we came to the
acacia trees. We hurled heavy Harra stones against those dry
trunks, and the tree-skeletons fell before us in ruins : — then
dashing stones upon them, we beat the timber bones into
lengths ; and charged our ass and departed.

We held another way homeward, by a dry upland bottom,
where I saw ancient walling of field enclosures, under red
trachyte bergs, Umm Rukaba, to the Hurda. The Hurda is
good corn land, the many ancient wells are sunk ten feet to
the basalt rock ; the water comes up sweet and light to drink,
but is lukewarm. Here Mohammed had bought a well and corn
plot of late, and yesterday he sent hither two lads from the
town, to drive his two oxen, saying to them, "Go and help
Haseyn in the Hurda." They labour with diligence, and eat
no more than the dates of him who bids them ; at night they
lie down wrapped in their cloaks upon the damp earth, by a
great fire of sammara in a booth of boughs, with the cattle.
They remain thus three days out, and the lads drive day and
night, by turns. The land-holders send their yokes of oxen to
this three-days' labour every fifteen days. * * *

VOL. II. D

50 WANDEKINGS IN ARABIA

* * * My Galla comrade had been put by Abdullah in the
room of the deceased Muharram at Umm Kida ; — for Aman, the
freedman of an Albanian petty officer, was accounted of among
them as an Albanian deputy petty officer. I returned now at
night to an empty house. Abdullah was a cursed man, I might
be murdered whilst I slept ; and he would write to the Pasha,
'The Nasrany, it may please your lordship, was found slain
such a morning in his lodging, and by persons unknown.' In
all the Kheybar cottages is a ladder and open trap to the house-
top ; and you may walk from end to end of all the house rows
by their terrace roofs, and descend by day or by night at the
trap, into what house-chamber you please : thus neighbours
visit neighbours. I could not pass the night at the Nejumy's ;
for they had but their suffa, so that his son Haseyn went to
sleep abroad in a hired chamber, with other young men in the
like case. Some householders spread matting over their trap,
in the winter night ; but this may be lifted without rumour,
and they go always barefoot. There were evil doers not far off,
for one night a neighbour's chickens which roosted upon our
house terrace had been stolen ; the thief, Aman thought, must
be our former Galla comrade : it was a stranger, doubtless,
for these black villagers eat no more of their poultry than the
eggs ! — This is a superstition of the Kheyabara, for which they
themselves cannot render a reason ; and besides they will not
eat leeks !

Another day whilst I sat in Ahmed's house there came up
Mohammed the Kurdy to coffee. The Kurdy spoke to us with
a mocking scorn of Muharram 's death : — in his fatal afternoon,
"the sick man said, ( Go Mohammed to Abdullah, for I feel
that I am dying and I have somewhat to say to him.' — ' Ana
nejjab, am I thy post-runner ? if it please thee to die, what is
that to us ? ' — the Egyptian lay sick. In the beginning of the
night Muharram was sitting up ; we heard a guggle in his
throat, — he sank backward and was dead ! We sent word to
Abdullah : who sent over two of the askars, and we made them
a supper of the niggard's goods. All Muharram's stores of
rice and samn went to the pot ; and we sat feasting in presence
of our lord [saint] Muharram, who could not forbid this honest
wasting of his substance." — " The niggard's goods are for the
fire " (shall be burned in hell), responded those present. I ques-
tioned the Kurdy Mohammed, and he denied before them ; and
the Egyptian denied it, that my medicines had been so much as
mentioned, or cause at all in Muharram's death. — The Kurdy
said of the jebal in the horizon of Kheybar, that they were but

A SOLDIER'S GRAVE 51

as cottages, in comparison with the mighty mountains of his own
country.

The sick Ageyly of Boreyda died soon after; but I had
«'J from the first to give him medicines, 'lie found the
Nasriiuy's remedies (minute doses of rhubarb) so horrible, he
said, that he would no more of them.' In one day he died and
was buried. But when the morrow dawned we heard in the
village, that the soldier's grave had been violated in the night !
— Certain who went by very early had seen the print of women's
feet round about the new-made grave. ' And who had done
this thing?' asked all the people. "Who, they answered
themselves, but the cursed witches ! They have taken up the
body, to pluck out the heart of him for their hellish orgies."
I passed by later with Amm Mohammed, to our garden labour,
and as they had said, so it seemed indeed ! if the prints which
we saw were not the footsteps of elvish children. — Aman carried
od fat cat to a neighbour woman of ours, and he told me
with loathing, that she had eaten it greedily, though she was
well-faring, and had store of all things in her bey t ; she was
said to be one of the witches ! * * *

CHAPTER IV

DELIVERANCE FROM KHEYBAR

WE looked again for Dakhil, returning from Medina. I spoke
to Mohammed to send one to meet him in the way : that were
there tidings out against my life (which Dakhil would not hide
from us), the messenger might bring us word with speed, and I
would take to the Harra. " The Siruan shall be disappointed,
answered my fatherly friend, if they would attempt anything
against thy life ! Wellah if Dakhil bring an evil word, I have
one here ready, who is bound to me, a Beduwy ; and by him I
will send thee away in safety." — This was his housewife's
brother, a wild grinning wretch, without natural conscience,
a notorious camel robber and an homicide. Their father had
been a considerable Bishr sheykh ; but in the end they had lost
their cattle. This wretch's was the Beduin right of the Halhal,
but that yielded him no advantage, and he was become a
gatuny at Kheybar ; where his hope was to help himself by
cattle-lifting, in the next hostile marches. — Last year seeing
some poor stranger in the summer market, with a few ells of
new-bought calico, (for a shirt-cloth,) in his hand, he vehemently
coveted it for himself. Then he followed that strange tribes-
man upon the Harra, and came upon him in the path and
murdered him ; and took his cotton, and returned to the village
laughing : — he was not afraid of the blood of a stranger ! The
wild wretch sat by grinning, when Amm Mohammed told me
the tale ; but the housewife said, sighing, "Alas ! my brother is
a kafir, so light-headed is he, that he dreads not Ullah." The
Nejiimy answered, " Yet the melaun helped our low plight last
year, (when there was a dearth at Kheybar) ; he stole sheep and
camels, and we feasted many times : — should we leave all the fat
to our enemies, and we ourselves perish with hunger ? Sheykh
Khalil, say was this lawful for us or haram ? "

I thought if, in the next days, I should be a fugitive upon

THE PASHA'S MESSAdK

the vast lava-field, without shelter from the sun, without known
landmarks, with water for less than three days, and infirm in
body, what hope had I to live? — A day later Dakliil ;».r rived
from Medina, and then, (that which I dreaded,) Amm Moham-
med was abroad, to hunt gazelles, upon the Harra; nor had he
given me warning overnight, — thus leaving his guest (the
A tabs' remiss understanding), in the moment of danger, with-
out defence. The Nejumy absent, I could not in a great peril
have escaped their barbarous wild hands ; but after some sharp
reckoning with the most forward of them I must have fallen in
this subbakha soil, without remedy. Ahmed was too ' religious '
to maintain the part of a misbeliever against any mandate from
Medina : even though I should sit in his chamber, I thought he
would not refuse to undo to the messengers from Abdullah. I
sat therefore in Mohammed's suffa, where at the worst I might
keep the door until heaven should bring the good man home. —
But in this there arrived an hubt of Heteym, clients of his,
from the Harra ; and they brought their cheeses and samn to
the Nejumy's house, that he might sell the wares for them.
Buyers of the black village neighbours came up with them, and
Mohammed's door was set open. I looked each moment for the
last summons to Abdullah, until nigh mid-day; when Amm
Mohammed returned from the Harra, whence he had seen the
nomads, far off, descending to Kheybar. — Then the Nejumy sat
down among us, and receiving a driving-stick from one of the
nomads, he struck their goods and cried, " Who buys this for so
much ? " and he set a just price between them : and taking his
reed-pen and paper he recorded their bargains, which were for
measures of dates to be delivered (six months later), in the
harvest. After an hour, Amm Mohammed was again ab leisure ;
then having shut his door, he said he would go to Abdullah and
learn the news.

He returned to tell me that the Pasha wrote thus, " We have
now much business with the Haj ; at their departure we will
examine and send again the books : in the meanwhile you are
to treat the Engleysy honourably and with hospitality." I was
summoned to Abdullah in the afternoon : Amm Mohammed
went with me, and he carried his sword, which is a strong
argument in a valiant hand to persuade men to moderation in
these lawless countries. Abdullah repeated that part of the
governor's order concerning the books ; of the rest he said
nothing. — I afterwards found Dakhil in the street ; he told me
he had been privately called to the (Turkish) Pasha, who enquired
of him, * What did I wandering in this country, and whether the
Nasrany spoke Arabic ? ' (he spoke it very well himself). Dakhil

54 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

found him well disposed towards me : he heard also in Medina
that at the coming of the Haj, Mohammed Said Pasha, being
asked by the Pasha-governor, if he knew me, responded, * He
had seen me at Damascus, and that I came down among the
Haj to Medain Salih ; and he wondered to hear that I was in
captivity at Kheybar, a man known to be an Engleysy and
who had no guilt towards the Dowla, other than to have been
always too adventurous to wander in the (dangerous) nomadic
countries.'

The few weeks of winter had passed by, and the teeming
spring heat was come, in which all things renew themselves :
the hamim month would soon be upon us, when my languish-
ing life, which the Nejumy compared to a flickering lamp-wick,
was likely (he said) to fail at Kheybar. Two months already
I had endured this black -captivity of Abdullah ; the third moon
was now rising in her horns, which I hoped in Heaven would
see me finally delivered. The autumn green corn was grown
to the yellowing ear ; another score of days — so the Lord
delivered them from the locust — and they would gather in
their wheat-harvest.

I desired to leave them richer in water at Kheybar. Twenty
paces wide of the strong Sefsafa spring was a knot of tall
rushes ; there I hoped to find a new fountain of water. The
next land-holders hearkened gladly to my saw, for water is
mother of corn and dates, in the oases ; and the sheykh's brother
responded that to-morrow he would bring eyyal, to open the
ground. — Under the first spade-stroke we found wet earth, and
oozing joints of the basalt rock : then they left their labour,
saying we should not speed, because it was begun on a
Sunday. They remembered also my words that, in case we
found a spring of water, they should give me a milch cow. On
the morrow a greater working party assembled. It might be
they were in doubt of the cow, and would let the work lie
until the Nasrany's departure, for they struck but a stroke or
two in my broken ground ; and then went, with crowbars, to
try their strength about the old well-head, and see if they
might not enlarge it. The iron bit in the flaws of the rock ; and
stiffly straining and leaning, many together, upon their crowbars,
they sprung and rent up the intractable basalt. Others who
looked on, whilst the labourers took breath, would bear a hand
in it : among them the Nejumy showed his manly pith and
stirred a mighty quarter of basalt. When it came to mid-day
they forsook their day's labour. Three forenoons they wrought
thus with the zeal of novices : in the second they sacrificed a

TIM-: SPRINGS OK KiFi-;vr,.\i:

goat, and sprinkled her blood upon the rock. I had not seen
Arabs labour thus in fellowship. In the Arabs are indigent
corroded minds full of speech- wisdom ; in the negroes' more
prosperous bodies are hearts more robust. They also fired the
rock, and by the third day the labourers had drawn out many
huge stones : now the old well-head was become like a great
bath of tepid water, and they began to call it el-hammam. We
had struck a side vein, which increased the old current of water
by half as much again, — a benefit for ever to the husbandmen
of the valley.

The tepid springs of Kheybar savour upon the tongue of
sulphur, with a milky smoothness, save the Ayn er-Reyili,
which is tasteless. Yellow frogs inhabit these springs, besides
the little silver-green fishes. Green filmy webs of water- weed
are wrapped about the channels of the lukewarm brooks, in
which lie little black turreted snails, like those of W. Thirba
and el-Ally [and Palmyra]. I took up the straws of caddis-
worms and showed them to Amm Mohammed : he considered
the building of those shell-pipes made without hands, and said ;
" Oh the marvellous works of God ; they are perfect without
end ! and well thou sayest, * that the Kheyabara are not housed
as these little vermin ! ' 3

I had nearly outworn the spite of fortune at Kheybar ; and
might now spend the sunny hours, without fear, sitting by
the spring Ayn er-Keyih, a pleasant place, little without the
palms ; and where only the eye has any comfort in all the
blackness of Kheybar. Oh, what bliss to the thirsty soul is
in that sweet light water, welling soft and warm as milk,
[86° F.] from the rock ! And I heard the subtle harmony of
Nature, which the profane cannot hear, in that happy stillness
and solitude. Small bright dragon-flies, azure, dun and ver-
milion, sported over the cistern water ruffled by a morning
breath from the figgera, aud hemmed in the solemn lava rock.
The silver fishes glance beneath, and white shells lie at tho
bottom of this water world. I have watched there the young
of the thob, shining like scaly glass and speckled : this faireut
of saurians lay sunning, at the brink, upon a stone ; and of1.1
times moving upon them and shooting out the tongue in?
snatched his prey of flies without ever missing. — Glad were we
when Jummar had filled our girby of this sweet water.

The irrigation rights of every plot of land are inscribed in
the sheykhs' register of the village ; — the week-day and the
hours when the owner with foot and spade may dam off and
draw to himself the public water. Amongst these rude Arabian
villagers are 110 clocks nor watches, — nor anything almost of

56 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

civil artifice in their houses. They take their wit in the day-
time, by the shado wing-round of a little wand set upon the
channel brink. — This is that dial of which we read in Job :
* a servant earnestly desireth the shadow . . . our days on the
earth are a shadow.' In the night tbey make account of time
more loosely. The village gates are then shut ; but the waterers
may pass out to their orchards from some of the next-lying
houses. Amm Mohammed tells me that the husbandmen at
Medina use a metal cup, pierced with a very fine eye, — so
that the cup set floating in a basin may sink justly at the
hour's end. * * *

* * * One afternoon when I went to present myself to the
village tyrant, I saw six carrion beasts, that had been theluls,
couched before Abdullah's door! the brutes stretched their long
necks faintly upon the ground, and their mangy chines were
humpless. Such could be none other than some unpaid soldiers'
jades from Medina ; and I withdrew hastily to the Nejumy. —
Certain Ageylies had been sent by the Pasha ; and the men had
ridden the seventy miles hither in five days ! — Such being the
Ageyl, whose forays formerly — some of them have boasted to
me — " made the world cold ! " they are now not seldom worsted
by the tribesmen of the desert. In a late expedition of theirs
from Medina, we heard that ' forty were fallen, their baggage
had been taken, and the rest hardly saved themselves.' — I went
back to learn their tidings, and meeting with Abdullah in the
street, he said, " Good news, Khalil ! thy books are come again,
and the Pasha writes, * send him to Ibn Rashid '."

On the morrow, Abdullah summoned me; he sat at coffee
in our neighbour Hamdan's house. — c This letter is for thee,
said he, (giving me a paper) from the Pasha's own hand.' And
opening the sheet, which was folded in our manner, I found
a letter from the Pasha of Medina ! written [imperfectly], as
follows, in the French language ; with the date of the Christian
year, and signed in the end with his name, — Stibry.

[Ad literam] Le 11 Janvier 1878

[Medine]

D'apr6s 1'avertissement de 1'autorite local, nous sommes sache
votre arrivee a Khaiber, a cette occasion je suis oblige de faire venir
les lettres de recommendation et les autres papiers a votre charge.

En etudiant a peine possible les livres de compte, les papiers
volants et les cartes, entin parmi ceux qui sont arrivaient-ici, jai
disserne que votre idee de voyage, corriger la carte, de savoir les

Till-: :• \Y IS SET FRI

conditions tlVtat, ot do (ruuvrr !<•.-> monuments antiques <lo 1' Arabia
crntralo dans le but cle publier uu immdo

je suis liii-ii satist'ai.-ant a votre etude utile pom- I'lmivers dana
ce point, et c'est un bon parti pour vous aussi ; mais vous avez
connu rortiiinoment jusqu' aujourd'liui j>armi aux alantours des
populations que vous trouve, il y a tant des Bedouins temeraire, tant
que vous avez le recommendion de quelque person nages, je ne regarde
que ce votre voyage est dangereux parmi les Bedouins sus-indicjue ;
c'est pour cela je m'oblige de vous inform^ a votre retour a un
moment plutot possible auprcs de Chelh d'lbni-Rechite a 1'abri de
toute danger, et vous trouvrez ci-join tous vos les lettres qu'il etait
chez-nous, et la recommendation au dite Chelh de ma part, et de la
prenez le chemin dans ces jours a votre destination.

SABRI

" And now, I said to Abdullah, where is that money which
pertains to me, — six lira ! " The black village governor startled,
changed his Turkish countenance, and looking felly, he said
" We will see to it." The six Ageylies had ridden from Medina,
by the Pasha's order, only to bring up my books, and they
treated me with regard. They brought word, that the Pasha
would send other twenty -five Ageylies to Hayil for this cause.
The chief of the six, a Wahaby of East Nejd, was a travelled
man, without fanaticism ; he offered himself to accompany me
whithersoever I would, and he knew, he said, all the ways, in
those parts and far southward in Arabia.

The day after when nothing had been restored to me, I found
Abdullah drinking coffee in sheykh Salih's house. "Why, I
said, hast thou not restored my things ? " — " I will restore them
at thy departure." — " Have you any right to detain them ? "
" Say no more (exclaimed the villain, who had spent my money)
— aNasrany to speak to me thus! — or I will give thee a buffet."
— " If thou strike me, it will be at thy peril. My hosts, how
may this lieutenant of a dozen soldiery rule a village, who cannot
rule himself ? one who neither regards the word of the Pasha of
Medina, nor fears the Sultan, nor dreads Ullah himself. Salih,
sheykh of Kheybar, hear how this coward threatens to strike
a guest in thy house ; and will ye suffer it my hosts ? " —
Abdullah rose and struck me brutally in the face. — " Salih, I
said to them, and you that sit here, are you free men ? I am
one man, infirm and a stranger, who have suffered so long, and
unjustly, — you all have seen it ! at this slave's hands, that it
might have whitened my beard : if I should hereafter remember
to complain of him, it is likely he will lose his office." Auwad,
the kady who was a friend, and sat by me, began some conciliating

58 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

speech. * Abdullah, he said, was to blame : Khalil was also to
blame. There is danger in such differences ; let there be no more
said betwixt you both.' Abdullah: "Now, shall I send thee to
prison ? " — " I tell thee, that I am not under thy jurisdiction ; "
and I rose to leave them. " Sit down, he cries, and brutally
snatched my cloak, and this askar — he looked through the case-
ment and called up one of his men that passed by — shall lead
thee to prison." I went down with him, and, passing Amm
Mohammed's entry, I went in there, and the fellow left me.

The door was locked, but the Beduin housewife, hearing my
voice, ran down to open : when I had spoken of the matter, she
left me sitting in the house, and, taking the key with her, the
good woman ran to call her husband who was in the palms.
Mohammed returned presently, and we went out to the plantations
together : but finding the chief of the riders from Medina, in the
street, I told him, ' since I. could not be safe here that I would
ride with them to the gate of the city. It were no new thing
that an Englishman should come thither ; was there not a cistern,
without the northern gate, named Birket el-Engleysy ? '

Mohammed asked ' What had the Pasha written ? he would
hear me read his letter in the Nasrany language ' : and he stood
to listen with great admiration. ' Pitta-pitta-pitta ! is such their
speech ? ' laughed he ; and this was his new mirth in the next
coffee meetings. But I found the good man weak as water in
the end of these evils : he had I know not what secret under-
standing now with the enemy Abdullah ; and, contrary to his
former words, he was unwilling that I should receive my things
until my departure ! The Ageylies stayed other days, and
Abdullah was weary of entertaining them. I gave the Wahaby
a letter to the Pasha ; which, as soon as they came again to
town, he delivered.

Kheybar, in the gibing humour of these black villagers, is
jezirat, ' an island ' : it is hard to come hither, it is not easy to
depart. Until the spring season there are no Aarab upon the
vast enclosing Harra : Kheybar lies upon no common way, and
only in the date-harvest is there any resort of Beduins to their
wadian and villages. In all the vulcanic country about, there
were now no more than a few booths of Heteym, and the
nearest were a journey distant. — But none of those timid and
oppressed nomads durst for any silver convey the Nasrany again
to Hayil ; so aghast are they all of the displeasure of Ibn Rashid.
I thought now to go to the (Harra) village el-Hayat, which lies
in the way of them that pass between Ibn Rashid's country and
Medina : and I might there find carriage to the Jebel.

THE ENGLKVs (I GOD RULE I

Tho Nrjuniy blamed my plain speaking : I liad no wit, he I
to be a traveller ! " If thou say among the Moslemin, that thou
art a Moslem, will your people kill thee, when you return home ?
— art thou afraid of this, Khalil?" So at the next coffee
meetings he said, " I have found a man that will not befriend
himself ! I can in no wise persuade sheykh Khalii : but if all
the Moslemin were like faithful in the religion, I say, the world
would not be able to resist us." * * '

* * * The Nejiimy family regarded me with affection: my
medicines helped (and they believed had saved) their infant
daughter; I was now like a son in the house, wullali in-ak
•in ithil I'-cli'dini )/d Khfilil, said they both. Mohammed exhorted
me, to dwell with him at Kheybar, 'where first after long
travels, I had found good friends. I should be no more
molested among them for my religion ; in the summer market
I might be his salesman, to sit at a stall of mantles and kerchiefs
and measure out cubits of calico, for the silver of the poor Beduw.
He would buy me then a great-eyed Galla maiden to wife.' —
There are none more comely women in the Arabs' peninsula ;
they are gracious in the simplest garments, and commonly of
a well tempered nature; and, notwithstanding that which is
told of the hither Habash countries, there is a becoming
modesty in their heathen blood. — This was the good Nejumy,
a man most worthy to have been born in a happier
country! * * *

* * * Mohammed asked, " What were the Engleys good
for ? " I answered, " They are good rulers." — " Ha ! and what
rule they? since they be not rebels (but friends) to the
Sooltan ? " — " In these parts of the world they rule India ; an
empire greater than all the Sultan's Dowlat, and the principal
beled of the Moslemin." — " Eigh ! I remember I once heard an
Hindy say, in the Haj, ' God continue the liakumat (government
of) el-Engleys ; for a man may walk in what part he will of el-
Hind, with a bundle of silver ; but here in these holy countries
even the pilgrims are in clanger of robbers ! ' " — Amm Mohammed
contemned the Hindies, " They have no heart, he said, and I
make no account of the Eugleys, for ruling over never so many
of them : I myself have put to flight a score of Hintid" — and
he told me the tale. " It was in my ignorant youth : one
morning in the Haj season, going out under the walls (of
Medina), to my father's orchard, I saw a company of Hinud
sitting before me upon a hillock, — sixteen persons : there sat a
young maiden in the midst of them — very richly attired ! for

60 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

they were some principal persons. Then I shouted, and lifting
my lance, began to leap and run, against them ; the Hindies
cried out, and all rising together they fled to save their lives ! —
leaving the maiden alone; and the last to forsake her was a
young man — he perchance that was betrothed to be her
liusband." — The gentle damsel held forth her delicate hands,
beseeching him by signs to take only her ornaments : she drew
off her rings, and gave them to the (Beduin-like) robber ; —
Mohammed had already plucked off her rich bracelets ! But
the young prodigal, looking upon her girlish beauty and her
distress, felt a gentleness rising in his heart and he left her
[unstained]. — For such godless work the Arabs have little or no
contrition ; this worthy man, whom God had established, even
now in his religious years, felt none. — It may seem to them
that all world's good is khcyr Ullali, howbeit diversely holden,
in several men's hands ; and that the same (whether by sub-
tilty, or warlike endeavour) might well enough be assumed
by another. * * *

* * * Twelve days after I had written to the Pasha, came his
rescript to Abdullah, with a returning hubt; bidding him 'beware
how he behaved himself towards the Engleysy, and to send me
without delay to Ibn Rashid; and if no Beduins could be
found to accompany me, to send with me some of the Ageyl :
he was to restore my property immediately, and if anything
were missing he must write word again.' The black village
governor was now in dread for himself; he went about the
village to raise that which he had spent of my robbed liras :
and I heard with pain, that (for this) he had sold the orphan's
cow.

He summoned me at night to deliver me mine own. The
packet of books and papers, received a fortnight before from
Medina, was sealed with the Pasha's signet : when opened a koran
was missing and an Arabic psalter ! I had promised them to
Arum Mohammed ; and where was the camel bag ? Abdullah
murmured in his black throat * Whose could be this infamous
theft ? ' and sent one for Dakhil the post. — Dakhil told us that
* Come to Medina he went, with the things on his back, to the
government palace ; but meeting with a principal officer — one
whom they all knew — that personage led him away to drink
coffee in his house. "Now let me see, quoth the officer, what
hast thou brought ? and, if that Nasrany's head should be cut
off, some thing may as well remain with me, before all goes up
to the Pasha." — The great man compelled me, said Dakhil, so I
let him have the books ; and when he saw the Persian camel-

ESCAl'K I'KuM A HARP, MKN/IL 61

bag, "Tin's too, h.« said, may remain with me."1 — " Ullah r
the father of him!'' exclaimed Abdullah: and, many of the
askars' voices answered about him, " Ullah curse him ! " I asked,
" Is it a poor man, who has done this?" Abtfn.f/»/i : " Poor!
he is rich, the Lord curse him ! It is our colonel, Khalil, at
Medina; where he lives in a great house, and receives a great
rnment salary, besides all the [dishonest] private gains of
his office." — "The Lord curse him!" exclaimed the Nejumy.
" The Lord curse him ! answered Aman (the most gentle minded
of them all), he has broken the namtts of the Dowla ! "
Abdullah : " Ah ! Khalil, he is one of the great ones at Medina,
and gomdny ! (a very adversary). Now what can we do, shall we
send again to Medina ? " A villager lately arrived from thence
said, "The colonel is not now in Medina, we heard a little
before our corning away, that he had set out for Mecca." — So
must other days be consumed at Kheybar for this Turkish
villain's wrong ! in the meanwhile Sa"bry Pasha might be recalled
from Medina !

I sat by the Nejumy 's evening fire, and boiled tea, which he
and his nomad jara had learned to drink with me, when we
heard one call below stairs ; the joyous housewife ran down in
haste, and brought up her brother, who had been long out
cattle lifting, with another gatuny. The wretch came in
jaded, and grinning the teeth : and when he had eaten a morsel,
he began to tell us his adventure ; — ' That come in the Jeheyna
dira, they found a troop of camels, and only a child to keep them.
They drove off the cattle; and drove them forth, all that day,
at a run, and the night after ; until a little before dawn, when,
having yet a day and a half to Kheybar, they fell at unawares
among tents ! — it was a menzil of Harb. The hounds barked
furiously, at the rushing by of camels, the Aarab ran from their
beyts, with their arms. He and his rafik alighting hastily,
forsook the robbed cattle, and saving no more than their
matchlocks, they betook themselves to the side of a mountain.
From thence they shot down against their pursuers, and those
shot up at them. The Harb bye and bye went home to kahwa ;
and the geyatin escaped to Kheybar on foot with their weary
lives ! '

The next day Amm Mohammed called his robber brother-
in-law to supper. The jaded wretch soon rose from the dish
to kindle his pipe, and immediately went home to sleep. —
Mohammed's wife returned later from milking their few goats ;
and as she came lighting herself upon the stairs, with a flaming
palm-branch, his keen eye discerned a trouble in her looks. —

62 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

" Eigh ! woman, he asked, what tidings ? " She answered with
a sorrowful alacrity, in the Semitic wise, " Well ! [a first word
of good augury], it may please Ullah : my brother is very sick,
and has a flux of the bowels, and is lying in great pain, as if
he were to die, and we cannot tell what to do for him : — it is
[the poor woman cast down her eyes] as if my brother had been
poisoned ; when he rose from eating he left us, and before he
was come home the pains took him ! " — Mohammed responded
with good humour, " This is a folly, woman, who has poisoned
the melaun ? I am well, and sheykh Khalil is well ; and
Haseyn and thou have eaten after us of the same mess, — but
thy brother is sick of his cattle stealing ! Light us forth, and
if he be ailing we will bring him hither, and sheykh Khalil
shall cure him with some medicine."

We found him easier ; and led him back with us. I gave
him grains of laudanum powder, which he swallowed without
any mistrusting. — I saw then a remedy of theirs, for the colic
pain, which might sometime save life after drugs have failed.
The patient lay groaning on his back, and his sister kneaded the
belly smoothly with her housemother's hands [they may be as
well anointed with warm oil] ; she gave him also a broth to
drink, of sour milk with a head of (thum) garlic beaten in it.
At midnight we sent him away well again : then I said to Amm
Mohammed, "It were easier to die once, than to suffer heart-
ache continually." — " The melaun has been twinged thus often-
times ; and who is there afraid of sheykh Khalil ; if thou bid
me, little father Khalil, I would drink poison." — The restless
Beduwy was gone, the third morrow, on foot o.ver the Harra,
to seek hospitality (and eat flesh-meat) at el-Hayat, — forty
miles distant.

The Siruan asked a medicine for a chill ; and I brought him
camphor. " Eigh ! said Abdullah, is not this kafur of the dead,
wherewith they sprinkle the shrouds as they are borne to the
burial? — five drops of this tincture will cut off a man's off-
spring. What hast thou done to drink of it, Amm Moham-
med ! " The good man answered, " Have I not Haseyn, and
the little bint ? Wellah if sheykh Khalil have made me from
this time childless, I am content, because Khalil has done it."
The black audience were aghast; " Keach me, I said to them,
that bottle and I will drink twice five drops." But they
murmured, " Akhs ! and was this one of the medicines of
Khalil ? " * * *

* # * The day was at hand, which should deliver me from

UNCLE KHALI I,

K hoy bar. Dukhil the post was willing to convey me to Hayil,
for two of my gold pieces : but that would leave me with less
th.-iu eighty shillings — too little to bring me to some friendly
soil, out of the midst of Arabia. Eyad, a Bishr Ageyly, prof-
fered to carry me on his sick theliil for five reals to ilayil. I
thought to go first (from this famine at K hey bar) to buy
victual at el-llayat; their oasis had not been wasted by locusts.
Those negro Nejd villagers are hospitable, and that which the
Arabians think is more than all to the welfare of their tribes
and towns, the sheykh was a just and honourable person. — The
Nejumy's wife's brother had returned from thence after the
three days' hospitality : and being there, with two or three
more loitering Beduwies like himself, he told us that each day
a householder had called them ; and " every host killed a bull
to their supper ! " " It is true, said the Nejumy ; a bull there
is not worth many reals." — "The villagers of Hayat are be-
come a whiter people of late years ! quoth the Beduwy ; this is
through their often marriages with poor women of Heteym and
Jeheyna."

— Eyad, a Beduwy, and by military adoption a townsman
of Medina, was one who had drunk very nigh the dregs, of the
mischiefs and vility of one and the other life. A Beduwy (mild
by nature to the guest), he had not given his voice for my cap-
tivity ; but in the rest he was a lukewarm adulator of Abdullah.
— All my papers were come again, save only the safe-conduct
of Ibn Hash-id, which they had detained ! The slave-hearted
Abdullah began now to call me ' Uncle Khalil ' ; for he
thought, 'What, if the Nasrany afterward remembered his
wrongs, and he had this power with the Dowla — ' ? How pitiful
a behaviour might I have seen from him if our lots had been
reversed at Kheybar ! He promised nie provision for the way,
and half the Ageyly's wages to Hayil ; but I rejected them
both.

Amm Mohammed was displeased because I would not receive
from him more than two handfuls of dates : — he was low him-
self till the harvest, and there remained not a strike of corn in
the village. I divided my medicines with the good man, and
bought him a tunic and a new gun-stock : these with other reals
of mine (which, since they were loose in my pockets, Abdullah
had not taken from me), already spent for corn and samn in
his house, might suffice that Amm Mohammed should not be
barer at my departure, for all the great-hearted goodness which
he had shown me in my long tribulation at Kheybar. He said,
' Nay, Khalil, but leave me happy with the remembrance,
and take it not away from me by requiting me ! only this

64 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

I desire of thee that thou sometimes say, ' The Lord remember
him for good.' Am I not thy abu, art not thou my son, be
we not brethren ? and thou art poor in the midst of a land
which thou hast seen to be all hostile to thee. Also Ahmed
would not suffer it ; what will my brother say ? and there
would be talk amongst the Kheyabara." I answered, "I shall
say nothing : " then he consented. So I ever used the Arabian
hospitality to my possibility : yet now I sinned in so doing,
against that charitable integrity, the human affection, which
was in Amm Mohammed ; and which, like the waxen powder
upon summer fruits, is deflowered under any rude handling.
When he received my gift, it seemed to him that I had taken
away his good works ! * * *

* * * Abdullah had purchased other camel-bags for me,
from a salesman who arrived from Medina. I agreed with
Eyad ; and on the morrow we should depart from Kheybar. —
When that blissful day dawned, my rafik found it was the 21st
of the moon Sdfr, and not lucky to begin our journey ; we
might set out, he said, the next morning.

I saw then two men brought before Abdullah from Umm
Kida, for resisting the forced cleansing and sweeping in their
suk. Abdullah made them lie upon their breasts, in a public
alley, and then, before weeping women, and the village neigh-
bours,— and though the sheykhs entreated for them, he beat
them, with green palm rods ; and they cried out mainly, till
their negro blood was sprinkled on the ground. Amm Mohammed
went by driving his kine to the common gathering-place of
their cattle without the gates : his half-Beduin (gentle) heart
swelled to see this bestial (and in his eyes inhuman) spectacle !
And with loud seditious voice as he returned, he named Abu
Aly " very ass, and Yahudy " ! to all whom he found in the
village street.

The new sun rising, this was the hour of my deliverance
from the long deyik es-sudr, the straitness of the breast in
affliction, at Kheybar. Eyad said that all his hire must be paid
him, ere the setting out ; because he would leave it with his
wife. In a menzil of the Aarab, I had not doubted, a Beduwy
is commonly a trusty rafik ; but Eyad was a rotten one, and
therefore I had covenanted to pay him a third in departing,
a third at el-Hayat, and a third at our arriving in Hayil.
Abdullah sought to persuade me with deceitful reasons ; but
now I refused Eyad, who I foresaw from this beginning would
be a dangerous companion. Abdullah : " Let us not strive, we
may find some other, and in all things, I would fain content

TIIK .IK \V-UKE ANNEZY 65

Khalil." Afterwards h<> said, " I voucli for Kyj'id, and if he fail
in an\ tiling, the fault, b«« upon my ln-ad ! an askar of

mine, Hi' Uowla JWu " /"/>// "/•//', and for any misdeed I might
cut oil' his head. Ky.-id's am-ars of pay are now live or six
hundred reals, and he durst not disobey the Dowla. Say which
way you would take to llayil, and to that I will bind him.
You may rest here a day and there a day, at your own liking,
and drink whey, where you find Beduins ; and to this Eyad ia
willing because his thelul is feeble. Wouldst thou as much
as fifteen days for the journey ? — I will give him twenty-six to
go and come."

The Nejiimy, who stood as a looker-on to-day among us, was
loud and raw in his words ; and gave his counsel so fondly
before them all, and manifestly to my hurt ! that I turned from
him with a heartache. The traveller should sail with every fair
wind in these fanatical countries, and pass forth before good-
will grow cold : I made Eyad swear before them all to be
faithful to me, and counted the five reals in his hand.

Abdullah had now a request, that an Ageyly Bishr lad,
Merjaii, should go in our company. I knew him to be of a
shallow humour, a sower of trouble, and likely by recounting
my vicissitudes at Kheybar to the Aarab in the way, to hinder
my passage. Abdullah : ' He asks it of your kindness, that he
might visit an only sister and his little brother at Hayil ; whom
he has not seen these many years.' I granted, and had ever
afterward to repent : — there is an impolitic humanity, which is
visited upon us.

The Jew-like Southern Annezy are the worst natured (saving
only the Kahtan) of all the tribes. I marked with discomfort of
heart the craven adulation of Eyad, in his leavetaking of these
wretches. Although I had suffered wrongs, I said to them (to
the manifest joy of the guilty Abdullah,) the last word of Peace.
— My comrade Aman came along with me. The Nejumy was
gone before to find his mare ; he would meet us by the way and
ride on a mile with me. We went by a great stone and there
I mounted : Aman took my hand feebly in his dying hand, and
prayed aloud that the Lord would bring me safely to my
journey's end. The poor Galla earnestly charged Eyad, to have
a care of me, and we set forward. * * *

1 * At little distance the Nejumy met us, — he was on foot.

He said, his mare had strayed in the palms ; and if he might find

her, he would ride down to the Tubj, to cut male palm blossoms

of the half-wild stems there, to marry them with his female

VOL. ii. E

66 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

trees at home. One husband stem (to be known by the doubly
robust growth) may suffice among ten female palms. — " Now God
be with thee, my father Mohammed, and requite thee." — " God
speed thee Khalil," and he took my hand. Amm Mohammed
went back to his own, we passed further ; and the world, and
death, and the inhumanity of religions parted us for ever !

We beat the pad-footed thelul over the fenny ground, and
the last brooks and plashes. And then I came up from the
pestilent Kheybar wadian, and the intolerable captivity of the
Dowla, to a blissful free air on the brow of the Harra ! In the
next hour we went by many of the vaults, of wild basalt stones,
which I have supposed to be barrows. After ten miles' march
we saw a nomad woman standing far off upon a lava rock, and
two booths of Heteym. My Beduin rafiks showed me the
heads of a mountain southward, el-Baitha, that they said stands
a little short of Medina.

It was afternoon, we halted and loosed out the thelul to
pasture, and sat down till it should be evening. When the sun
was setting we walked towards the tents: but the broken-
headed Eyad left me with Harned and his loaded thelul, and
went with Merjan to guest it at the other beyt. The house-
holder of the booth where I was, came home with the flocks and
camels ; he was a beardless young man. They brought us
buttermilk, and we heard the voice of a negress calling in
the woman's apartment, Hamed ! yd Hamo ! She was from
the village, and was staying with ,these nomad friends in the
desert, to refresh herself with leban. It was presently dark, but
the young man went abroad again with the ass to bring in
water. He returned after two hours and, without my know-
ledge, they sacrificed a goat : it was for this he had fetched
water. The young Heteyiny called me — the adulation of an
abject race — Towil el-amr.

After the hospitality Eyad entered, "Khalil, he said, hast
thou reserved no morsels for me, that am thy rafik ? " — " Would
a rafik have forsaken me ? " He now counselled to hold a more
westerly course, according to the tidings they had heard in the
other tent, 'that we might come every day to menzils of the
Aarab, and find milk and refreshment ; whereas, if I visited el-
Hayat, all the way northward to Hayil from thence was now
bare of Beduins.' — I should thus miss el-Hayat, and had no
provisions : also I assented to them in evil hour ! it had been
better to have yielded nothing to such treacherous rafiks.

We departed at sunrise, having upon our right hand, in the
' White Harra ' (el-Abiath) a distant mountain, which they like-

WITHOUT SHELTER OR WAT Kit C7

wise iianird < 'r-AW/A>/ [other than that in the M.-j;ix, nigh
Medina). In that, jrbel, quoth my rafiks, are the highest shdcbdn
(seyl-st rands) of \Y. t>r-Kinnmah ; but all on this side seyls down
to the (great I I''.i^) Wady t-l-II ninth. We passed by sharp
Classy lavas; k< — /<>///'/' said my companions. A pair of great
lapwing-like fowl, Jnttnint, flattered before us; I have seldom
seen them in the deserts [and only at this season] : they have
whitish and dun-speckled feathers. Their eggs (brown and
rose, black speckled) I have found in May, laid two together
upon the bare wilderness gravel [near Maan] ; they were great
as turkey-e^-ps and well tasting : the birds might be a kind of
bustards. "Their flesh is nesh as cotton between the teeth,"
quoth the Bishr Sybarite Eyad. Merjan and Eyad lured to
them, whistling; they drew off their long gun-leathers, and
stole under the habaras ; but as Beduins will not cast away lead
in the air, they returned bye and bye as they went. I never
saw the Arabs' gunning help them to any game : only the Nejumy
used to shoot at, (and he could strike down) flying partridges.

From hence the vulcanic field about us was a wilderness of
sharp lava stones, where few or no cattle paths [Bishr, jadda]
appeared; and nomads go on foot among the rocking blocks un-
willingly. A heavy toppling stone split the horny thickness
of Hamed's great toe. I alighted that he might ride; but
the negro borrowed a knife and, with a savage resolution, shred
away his flesh, and went on walking. In the evening halt, he
seared the bloody wound, and said, it would be well enough,
for the next marches. As we journeyed the March wind
blustered up against us from the north ; and the dry herbage and
scudding stems of sere desert bushes, were driven before the
blast. Our way was uncertain, and without shelter or water ;
the height of this lava-plain is 3400 feet. Merjan — the lad was
tormented with a throbbing ague-cake (tdhal), after the Kheybar
fever, shouted in the afternoon that he saw a flock ; and then all
beside his patience he shrieked back curses, because we did not
follow him : the flock was but a troop of gazelles. " Fen el-
Aarab, they said at last, the nomads where? — nejfera ! deceitful
words ; but this is the manner of the Heyteyman ! they misled
us last night, Ullah send them confusion." The negro had
drunk out nearly all in my small waterskin : towards evening he
untied the neck and would have made a full end of it himself
at a draught ; but I said to him, " Nay, for we have gone and
thirsted all the day, and no man shall have more than other."
The Beduins cried out upon him, "And thinkest thou that we
be yet in the Saheyn ? this is the kh&la and no swaggerino-
place of the Kheyabara." Finally, when the sun set, we found

68 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

a hollow ground and sidr trees to bear off the night wind, which
blew so fast and pierced our slender clothing : they rent down
the sere white arms of a dead acacia, for our evening fire. Then
kneading flour of the little water which remained to us, we made
hasty bread under the embers. The March night was cold.

We departed when the day dawned, and held under the sand-
stone mountain GUTS : and oh, joy ! this sun being fairly risen,
the abhorred land-marks of Kheybar appeared no more. We
passed other vaulted cells and old dry walling upon the waste
Harra, and an ancient burying-place. " See, said Eyad, these
graves of the auellin, how they lie heaped over with stones ! "
We marched in the vulcanic field — * a land whose stones are
iron ', and always fasting, till the mid-afternoon, when we found
in some black sand-beds footprints of camels. At first my
rafiks said the traces were of a rahla five to ten days old ; but
taking up the jella, they thought it might be of five days ago.
The droppings led us over the Harra north-westward, towards
the outlying plutonic coasts of J. Hejjur. — Footprints in the
desert are slowly blotted by insensible wind causing the sand
corns to slide ; they might otherwise remain perfectly until the
next rain. — In a monument lately opened in Egypt, fresh prints
of the workmen's soles were found in the fine powder of the
floor ; and they were of an hundred men's ages past ! The
Beduins went to an hollow ground, to seek a little ponded rain,
and there they filled the girby. That water was full of wiggling
white vermin ; and we drank — giving God thanks — through a
lap of our kerchiefs. [We may see the flaggy hare-lips of the
camel fenced with a border of bristles, bent inwardly ; and
through this brush the brute strains all that he drinks of the
foul desert waters !] The Beduin rafiks climbed upon every high
rock to look for the nomads : we went on till the sun set, and
then alighted in a low ground with acacia trees and bushes ;
there we found a dar of the nomads lately forsaken. We were
here nigh the borders of the Harra.

As the morrow's sun rose we set forward, and the camel drop-
pings led us toward the Thullan Hejjur. We came bye and bye
to the Harra side, and the lava-border is here like the ice-brink
of a glacier ; where we descended it was twenty feet in height,
and a little beside us eight or ten fathoms. Beyond the Harra
we passed forth upon barren steeps of plutonic gravel, furrowed
by the secular rains and ascending toward the horrid wilderness
of mountains, Jebal Hejjur. A napping gazelle-buck, started
from a bush before us ; and standing an instant at gaze, he had
fallen then to the shot of an European, — but the Beduins are
always unready. As we journeyed I saw an hole, a yard deep,

THE SANDSTONE PLATFORM MOUNTAIN

digged in the desert eartli ; tin- rafi -red me, * It was

for a mrjtli'ii' (,ni>- x/r/- of fhr .•;///"//-/";./•;.'— --They kindle a fire in
it, and after raking out the embers the sick is seated in the
hot sand: such may be a salutary sweating-bath. The Ara-
bians dread extremely the homicide disease ; and the calamity
of a great sheykh of the Annezy in Kasim was yet fresh in
men's memories. — His tribesfolk removed from him in haste;
and his own kindred and even his household forsook him !

Leaving the sandstone platform mountain el-KKtdm upon the
right hand, we came to the desolate mountains, whose knees
and lower crags about us were traps, brown, yellow, grey, slate-
colour, red and purple. Small black eagles, el-agab, lay upon
the wing above us, gliding like the shadows, which their out-
stretched wings cast upon the rocky coasts. Crows and ra"khams
hovered in the lower air, over a forsaken dar of the nomads :
their embers were yet warm, they had removed this morning.
The Beduin companions crept out with their long matchlocks,
hoping to shoot a crow, and have a pair of shank-bones for pipe-
stems. I asked them if there had fallen a hair or feather to their
shot in the time of their lives ? They protested, " Ay wellah,
Khalil ; and the gatta many times." Not long after we espied
the Aarab and the camels. We came up with them a little
after noon, when they first halted to encamp. The sheykh, see-
ing strangers approach, had remained a little in the hindward ;
and he was known to my companions. These nomads were Ferd-
dessa, Ibn Sim-ry, Heteym. We sat down together, and a weled
milked two of the sheykh's nagas, for us strangers.

This sheykh, when he knew me to be the Nasrany, began to
bluster, although I was a guest at his milk-bowl. " What !
heathen man, he cries ; what ! Nasrany, wherefore comest thou
hither ? Dost thou not fear the Aarab's knife ? Or thinkest
thou, 0 Jew-man, that it cannot carve thy throat ? — which will
be seen one day. 0 ye his rafiks, will they not cut the wezand
of him ? Where go ye now — to Hayil ? but Ibn Bashid will kill
him if this (man) come thither again." — The Heteym are not
so civil-minded as the right Beduw; they are often rough
towards their guests, where the Beduw are gentle-natured.
When I saw the man was a good blunt spirit, I derided his
ignorance till he was ashamed ; and in this sort you may easily
defeat the malicious simplicity of the Arabs.

We drove on our beast to their camp, and sat down before a
beyt. The householder bye and bye brought us forth a bowl of
leban and another of mereesy ; we loosed out the thelul to pas-
ture, and sat by our baggage in the wind and beating sun till
evening ; when the host bade us enter, and we found a supper

70 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

set ready for us, of boiled rice. He had been one in the Heteymy
hubt which was lately taken by a foray of Jeheyna near the
walls of Medina. Upon the morrow this host removed with his
kindred, and we became guests of another beyt ; for we would
repose this day over in their menzil, where I counted thirty
tents. When I gave a sick person rhubarb, his friends were
much pleased for " by the smack, said they, it should be a good
medicine indeed." A few persons came to us to enquire the
news : but not many men were at home by day in the Heteymy
menzil : for these nomads are diligent cattle-keepers, more than
the Beduw. * * *

* * * They questioned roughly in the booth, " What are the
Nasara, what is their religion ? " One among them said : " I
will tell you the sooth in this as I heard it [in Medina, or in the
civil north countries] : The Nasara inhabit a city closed with
iron and encompassed by the sea ! " Eydd : " Talk not so bois-
terously, lest ye offend Khalil ; and he is one that with a word
might make this tent to fall about our ears." " Eigh ! they an-
swered, could he so indeed ? " I found in their menzil two lives
blighted by the morbus gallicus. I enquired from whence had
they that malady ? They answered, " From el-Medina."

At daybreak the nomad people removed. We followed with
them westward, in these mountains ; and ascended through a
cragged passage, where there seemed to be no footing for
camels. Hamed, who had left us, came limping by with one
whom he had found to guide him: "Farewell, I said, akliu
Hamda" The Kheybar villain looked up pleased and confused,
because I had named him (as one of the valiant) by his sister,
and he wished me God speed. We were stayed in the midst
by some friends, that would milk for us ere we departed from
among them. Infinite seemed to me the horrid maze of these
desolate and thirsty mountains ! Their name Jebal Hejjur may
be interpreted the stony mountains : — they are of the Welad
Aly and Bishr, — and by their allowance of these Heteym. In
the valley deeps they find, most years, the rabia and good
pasture bushes. These coasts seyl by W. Hejjur to the W.
el-Humth. We were now much westward of our way. The
nomads removed southward ; and leaving them we descended,
in an hour, to a wady bottom of sand, where we found another
Heteym menzil, thirty booths, of Si^yder, Ibn Simry. The
district (of a kind of middle traps), they name Yeteroha : Eyad's
Aarab seldom visited this part of their dira ; and he had been
here but once before. These mountains seyl, they say, by W.
Khafutha, one of the Kheybar valleys.

KV.urs TRI:A< EEROU8 THOUGHTS 71

Merjfin found here some of his own kindred, a household or
two of his lUshr clan /A/"/'/"- or /A;/V' /<///.— There are many poor
families of Bedtiin tribesmen living (for their more welfare) in
the peaceable society of the Ileteym. A man, ihnf wa
cousin, laid hands on the thelul, and drew her towards his
hospitable beyt. — Our hosts of yesterday sent word of my being
in the dira to a sick sheykh of theirs, lln H<\i/:.<'tii, who had been
hurt by a spear-thrust in a ghrazzu. Amm Mohammed lately
sold some ointment of mine to the sick man's friends in
K hoy bar, which had been found excellent ; and his acquaintance
desired that I should ride to see him. I consented to wait here
one day, until the return of their messenger.

When I took out my medicine book and long brass Arabic
inkhorn, men and women gathered about me ; it was marvels to
them to see me write and read. They whispered, " He sees the
invisible ; — at least thou seest more than we poor folk ! — it is
written there ! " The host had two comely daughters ; they won-
dered to look upon the stranger's white skin. The young women's
demeanour was easy, with a maidenly modesty ; but their eye-
glances melted the heart of the beardless lad Merjan, their cousin,
who had already a girl- wife at Kheybar. These nomad-hareem
in Nejd were veiled with the face-clout, but only from the mouth
downward ; they wore a silver ring in the right nostril, and
a braided forelock hanging upon the temples. The goodman
went abroad with his hatchet, and we saw them no more till
sunset, when he and his wife came dragging-in great lopped
boughs of tolh trees : — where we see the trail of boughs in the
khala, it is a sign of the nomad menzils. Of these they made a
sheep-pen before the beyt ; and the small cattle were driven in
and folded for the night. They call it hatliira; " Shammar, they
said, have another name," [serifat]. The host now set before us
a great dish of rice.

Eyad was treacherous, and always imagining, since he had
his wages, how he might forsake me : the fellow would not
willingly go to Hayil. " Khalil, shall I leave thee here ? wellah
the thelul is not in plight for a long journey." — " Restore then
three reals and I will let thee go."— " Ah ! how may I, Khalil ?
you saw that I left the money at home." — "Then borrow it
here." — " Bless me ! which of these Aarab has any money, or
would lend me one real ? " — " All this I said at Kheybar, that
thou wouldst betray me ; Eydd, thou shalt carry me to Hayil,
as thou art bounden." — " But here lies no way to Hayil, we are
come out of the path; these Aarab have their faces towards
the Auajy, let us go on with them, it is but two marches, and I
will leave thee there." — The ill-faith of the Arabs is a gulf,

72 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

in the path of the unwary! there is nothing to hope for
in man, amongst them ; and their heaven is too far off, or
without sense of human miseries. Now I heard from this
wretch's mouth my own arguments, which he had bravely con-
tradicted at Kheybar! On the morrow Eyad would set out
with the rising sun : I said, we will remain here to-day, as thou
didst desire yesternight and obtain of me. But he loaded ! and
then the villanous rafik came with his stick, and — it was that
he had learned in the Turkish service — threatened to beat me,
if I did not remove : but he yielded immediately.

In this menzil I found a Solubby household from W. es-
Suffera, which is spoken of for its excessive heat, in the Hejaz,
not much north of Mecca. They were here above three
hundred miles from home ; but that seems no great distance
to the land-wandering Solubba. The man told me that when
summer was in, they would go to pitch, alone, at some water in
the wilderness : and (having no cattle) they must live then
partly of venison. " You have now asked me for an eye-
medicine, can you go hunting with blear eyes ? " — " It is the
young men (el-eyydl) that hunt; and I remain at home." — I
went further by a tent where the Heteymy housewife was
boiling down her leban, in a great cauldron, to mereesy. I sat
down to see it : her pot sputtered, and she asked me, could I
follow the spats with my eyes upward? "For I have heard
say, that the Nasara cannot look up to heaven." Harshly she
chid ' my unbelief and my enmity to Ullah ' ; and I answered
her nothing. Then she took up a ladleful of her mereesy
paste, poured samn on it, in a bowl, and bade the stranger
eat, saying cheerfully, "Ah! why dost thou continue without
the religion ? and have the Lord against thee and the people
also ; only pray as we, and all the people will be thy kindred."
— Such were the nomads' daily words to me in these deserts.

The morning after, when the messenger had not returned,
we loaded betimes. The sun was rising as we rode forth ; and
at the camp's end another Bishr householder bade us alight,
for he had made ready for us — no common morrow's hospitality ;
but his dish of rice should have been our supper last evening.
Whilst we were eating, a poor woman came crying to me, * to
cure her daughter and stay here, — we should be her guests ; and
she pretended she would give the hakim a camel when her child
was well.' Eyad was now as iniquitously bent that I should
remain, as yesterday that I should remove ; but I mounted and
rode forth : we began our journey without water. The guest
must not stretch the nomad hospitality, we could not ask them
to fill our small girby with the common juice of the earth ; yet

EYAD'S MATCH LOCK 73

when hosts send to a wcyrid they will send also the guest's
water-skin to be filled with their own girbies.

\Ve journeyed an hour or two, over the pathless mountains, to
a brow from whence we overlooked an empty plain, lying before
us to the north. Only Merjun had been here once in his child-
hood ; he knew there were waterpits yonder, — and we must
find them, since we had nothing to drink. We descended, and
saw old footprints of small cattle ; and hoped they might lead
to the watering. In that soil of plutonic grit were many
glittering morsels of clear crystal. Merjan, looking upon the
landmarks, thought bye and bye that we had passed the water ;
and my rafiks said they would return upon the theliil to seek
it. They bade me sit down here and await them : but I thought
the evil in their hearts might persuade them, ere they had
ridden a mile, to leave me to perish wretchedly. — Now couching
the theliil, they unloaded my bags. " The way is weary, they
said, to go back upon our feet, it may be long to find the
themeyil ; and a man might see further from the back of the
thelul."—"! will look for the water with you."— "Nay, but
we will return to thee soon." — "Well go, but leave with me
thy matchlock, Eyad ; and else we shall not part so." He laid
down his gun unwillingly, and they mounted and rode from me.

They were out an hour and a half : then, to my comfort,
I saw them returning, and they brought water. — Eyad now
complained that I had mistrusted him ! ' And wellah no man
before had taken his gun from him ; but this is Khalil ! ' —
" Being honest rafiks, you shall find me courteous ; — but tell
me, you fired upon your own tribesmen ? " — " Ay, billah ! I an
Auajy shot against the Auajy, and if I dealt so with mine own
kinsmen, what would I not do unto thee ? " — " How then might
I trust thee?" Merjan: "Thou sayest well, Khalil, and this
Eyad is a light-headed coxcomb." Among the Aarab, friends
will bite at friends thus, betwixt their earnest and game, and it
is well taken. Eydd: "Come, let us sit down now and drink
tobacco ; for we will not journey all by day, but partly, where
more danger is, in the night-time. Go Merjan, gather stalks,
and let us bake our bread here against the evening, when it
were not well to kindle a fire." The lad rose and went cheer-
fully ; for such is the duty of the younger among wayfaring
companions in the khala. * * *

* An idle hour passed, and we again set forward ; the
land was a sandy plain, bordered north- east ward by distant
mountains. In the midst, between hills, is a summer watering
place of the Auajy, Ycmmcn. There are ancient ten-fathom

74 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

wells, and well steyned, the work, they say, of the Jan. — We
have passed again from the plutonic rocks to the (here dark-
coloured) red sandstones. A black crater hill appeared now,
far in front upon the Harra, J. Ethnan. This sandy wilderness
is of the Auajy ; * white ' soil, in which springs the best pasture,
and I saw about us almost a thicket of green bushes ! — yet the
two-third parts of kinds which are not to the sustenance of any
creature : we found there fresh foot-prints of ostriches. " Let
us hasten, they said, [over this open country]," and Eyad be-
sought me to look in my books, and forecast the peril of our
adventure ; ' for welldh yudayyik sudry, his breast was straitened,
since I had made him lay down his matchlock by me.'

We halted an hour after the stars were shining, in a low
place, under a solitary great bush; and couched the thelul
before us, to shelter our bodies from the chill night wind, now
rising to a hurricane, which pierced through their light Hejaz
clothing. The Beduin rafiks, to comfort themselves with fire,
forgot their daylight fears : they felt round in the darkness for
a few sticks. And digging there with my hands, I found jella
in the sand, — it was the old mubrak, or night lair, of a camel ;
and doubtless some former passenger had alighted to sleep at
our inn of this great desert bush : the beast's dung had been
buried by the wind, two or three years. Merjan gathered his
mantle full : the precious fuel soon glowed with a red heat in
our sandy hearth, and I boiled tea, which they had not tasted
till now.

The windy cold lasted all night, the blast was outrageous.
Hardly at dawn could they, with stiffened fingers, kindle a new
fire : the rafiks sat on, — there was not warmth in their half
naked bodies to march against this wild wind. — A puff whirling
about our bush scattered the dying embers, " Akhs ! cries Eyad,
the sot, Ullah yuldan abu ha'l Imibub, condemn the father of this
blustering blast ; and he added, Ullah yusidlat aly hcCl liattctb,
God punish this firewood." We rose at last ; and the Beduin
rafiks bathed their bodies yet a moment in the heat, spreading
their loose tunics over the dying embers. The baffling March
blast raged in our teeth, carrying the sandy grit into our eyes.
The companions staggered forward on foot, — we marched north-
eastward : after two hours, they halted to kindle another fire.
I saw the sky always overcast with thin clouds. Before noon
the storm abated ; and the wind chopping round blew mildly in
the afternoon, from the contrary part ! We approached then
the black border of the Harra, under the high crater-hill Ethnan.
Ethnan stands solitary, in a field of sharp cinder-like and rifted
lavas ; the nomads say that this great liilla is inaccessible.

THE EIGHTH EVENI 75

Sometimes, after \\int.-r rain, they see a light reeking vapour
about the volcano head : and tin- lik" is seen in winter mornings
tvrlain deep rifts in the Ilarra, — 'the smell of it is like
the breath of warm \\ater.' This was confirmed to me by
AniTH Mohammed.

In that ]>art there is a (land-mark) valley-ground which lies
through the llarra towards el-ilayat, IV. Mukheyat. My small
watorskin might hardly satisfy the thirst of three men in one
summer's march, and this was the second journey; we drank
therefore only a little towards the afternoon, and had nothing
to eat. But my mind was full to see so many seamed, guttered
and naked cinder-hills of craters in the horrid black lavas
before us. The sense of this word hilla, hillaya, is according
to Amm Mohammed, ' that which appears evidentl}7,' — and he
told me, there is a kind of dates of that name at Medina. Eyad
said thus, " Ilalla is the Ilarra-hill of black powder and slaggy
matter; Jiclliti/ei/ is a little Harra-hill; hil/t or hdlowat (others
say hillidn) are the Harra-hills together." — We marched towards
the same hillies which I had passed with Ghroceyb. When the
sun. was near setting the rafiks descried, and greeted (devoutly)
the new moon.

The stars were shining when we halted amidst the hillian
the eighth evening of our inarch from Kheybar. They thought
it perilous to kindle a fire here, and we had nothing to eat ; —
there should be water, they said, not far off". Eyad rose to
seek it, but in the night-time he could not find it again. — " I
have been absent, he murmured, twelve years ! " He knew his
landmarks in the morning ; then he went out, and brought
again our girby full of puddle water. The eye of the sun was
risen (as they said) ' a spear's length,' on height, when feeling
ourselves refreshed with the muddy bever, we set forward in
haste.

They held a course eastward over the lava country, to
Tk&rghrvd : that is a hamlet of one household upon the wells
of an antique settlement at the further border of the Harra.
Eydd : "It was found in the last generation by one who
went up and down, like thyself, yujassas, spying out the
country : " and he said I should see Thiirghrud in exchange
for el-Hayat. We went on by a long seyl and black sand-
bed in the lavas, where was sprung a little rabia : and driving
the wretched theliil to these green borders we let her graze
forward, or gathering the herbs in our hands as we marched,
we thrust them into her jaws. Where there grew an acacia
I commonly found a little herbage, springing under the north
side of the tree; that is where the lattice of minute leaves

76 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

casts a thin shadowing over the sun-stricken land, and the
little autumn moisture is last dried up. I was in advance
and saw camels' footprints ! Calling the rafiks I inquired if
these were not of yesterday : — they said they were three days
old. They could not tell me if the traces were of a ghrazzu, —
that is, these Beduin Ageylies did not distinguish whether they
were the smaller footprints of theluls, passing lightly with
riders, or of grazing camels ! But seeing the footing of camel-
calves I could imagine that this was a drove moving between
the pastures. It happened as in the former case when we
found the traces of Ibn Simry's cattle, that a stranger judged
nigher the truth than his Beduin company. The footprints
lay always before us, and near mid-day, when they were in
some doubt whether we should not turn and avoid them, we
saw a camel troop pasturing in a green place, far in front.

The herders lay slumbering upon their faces in the green
grass, and they were not aware of us, till our voice startled
them with the fear of the desert. They rose hastily and with
dread, seeing our shining arms ; but hearing the words of peace
(salaam aleyk) they took heart. When Eyad afterward related
this adventure, " Had they been gom, he said, we should have
taken wellah all that sight of cattle ! and left not one of them."
So sitting down with them we asked the elder herdsman, ' How
he durst lead his camels hither ? ' He answered, " Ullah yetowil
timr ha' I weled ! God give that young man [the Emir Ibn
Rashid] long life, under whose rule we may herd the cattle
without fear. It is not nowadays as it was ten years yore,
but I and my little brother may drive the 'bil to pasture all
this land over." He sent the child to milk for us ; and way-
worn, hungry and thirsting, we swallowed every man three or
four pints at a draught : only Merjan, because of his ague cake,
could not drink much milk. The lads, that were Heteymies,
had been some days out from the menzil, and their camels
were jezzin. They carried but their sticks and cloaks, and a
bowl between them, and none other provision or arms. When
hungry or thirsting they draw a naga's udder, and drink their
fill. They showed us where we might seek the nomads in
front, and we left them.

CHAPTEE V

DESERT JOURNEY TO IlAYIL. THE NASRlNY IS DRIVEN
FROM THENCE

WE came in the afternoon to a sandstone platform standing
like an island with cliffs in the basaltic Harra ; the rafiks
thought we were at fault, as they looked far over the vulcanic
land and could not see the Aarab. From another high ground
they thought they saw a camel-herd upon a mountain far off :
yet looking with my glass I could not perceive them ! We
marched thither, and saw a nomad sitting upon a lava brow,
keeping his camels. The man rose and came to meet us ; and
11 \Vhat ho ! he cries, Khalil, comest thou hither again ? " The
voice I knew, and now I saw it was Eyada ibn Ajjueyn, the
Heteymy sheykh, from whose menzil I had departed with
Ghroceyb to cross the Harra, to Kheybar !

Eyada saluted me, but looked askance upon my rafiks, and
they were strange with him and silent. This is the custom
of the desert, when nomads meeting with nomads are in doubt
of each other whether friends or foemen. We all sat down ;
and said the robust Heteymy, " Khalil what are these with
tuee ? "— " Ask them thyself."—" Well lads, what tribesmen be
ye, — that come I suppose from Kheybar ? " They answered,
" We are Ageyl and the Bashat el-Medina has sent us to convey
Khalil to Ibn Bashid."— " But I see well that ye are Beduw,
and I say what Beduw?" — Eyad answered, " Yd Fulan, 0
Someone — for yet I heard not thy name, we said it not hitherto,
because there might be some debate betwixt our tribes." —
" Oho ! is that your dread ? but fear nothing [at a need he
had made light of them both], eigh, Khalil ! what are they ?
— Well then, said he, I suppose ye be all thirsty ; I shall milk
for thee, Khalil, and then for these, if they would drink ! "
When my rafiks had drunk, Eyfid answered, " Now I may tell
thee we are of Bishr." — " It is well enough, we are friends ;
and Khalil thou art I hear a Nasrany, but how didst thou

78 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

see Kheybar?" — " A cursed place." — " Why wouldst thou go
thither, did I not warn thee ? " — " Where is Ghroceyb ? " —
" He is not far off, he is well ; and Ghroceyb said thou wast
a good rafik, save that thou and he fell out nigh Kheybar, I
wot never how, and thou wouldst have taken his thelul." — " This
is his wild talk." — " It is likely, for Khalil (he spoke to my rafiks)
is an honest man ; the medicines our hareem bought of him,
and those of Kasim's Aarab, they say, have been effectual.
How found ye him ? is he a good rafik ? " — " Ay, this ought
we to say, though the man be a Nasrany ! but billah it is the
Moslems many times that should be named Nasara." — " And
where will ye lodge to-night ? " — " We were looking for the
Aarab, but tell us where should we seek their beyts." — " Yonder
(he said, rising up and showing us with his finger), take the low
way, on this hand ; and so ye linger not you may be at their
menzil about the sunsetting. I may perhaps go thither my-
self in the evening, and to-morrow ride with you to Hayil." —
We wondered to find this welfaring sheykh keeping his own
camels !

We journeyed on by cragged places, near the east border
of the Harra; and the sun was going down when we found
the nomads' booths pitched in a hollow ground. These also
were a ferij (dim. feraij, and pi. ferj&ii), or partition, of
Heteym. A ferij is thus a nomad hamlet ; and commonly the
households in a ferij -are nigh kindred. The most nomad
tribes in Nejd are dispersed thus three parts of the year, till
the lowest summer season ; then they come together and pitch
a great standing menzil about some principal watering of their
dira.

Wre dismounted before the sheykh's tent ; and found a gay
Turkey carpet within, the uncomely behaviour of Heteym, and
a miserable hospitality. They set before us a bowl of milk-
shards, that can only be well broken between mill-stones. Yet
later, these uncivil hosts, who were fanatical young men, brought
us in from the camel-milking nearly two pailfuls of that perfect
refreshment in the desert : — Eyada came not.

These hosts had heard of the Nasrany, and of my journey
with Ghroceyb, and knew their kinsman's tale, ' that (though
a good" rafik) Khalil would have taken the thelul, when they
were nigh Kheybar.' Another said, ' It was a dangerous pas-
sage, and Ghroceyb returning had been in peril of his life ; for
as he rode again over the Harra there fell a heavy rain. Then
he held westward to go about the worst of the lava country ;
and as he was passing by a sandy seyl, a head of water came

COLD AND WIND

down upon liini : his thelul foundered, and his matchlock fell
from him : (Iliroceyb hardly saved himself to land, rind «,
out the thelul, and found his gun again.'

On the morrow wo rode two hours, and came to another
hamlet of Ilcteym. — This day we would give to repose, and
vent to alight at a beyt ; and by singular adventure that was
Sal ih's ! he who had forsaken me in these parts when I came
down (now three months ago) from Huyil. As the man stepped
out to meet us, I called him by his name, and he wondered
to siv me. He was girded in his gunner's belt, to go on foot
with a companion to el-Huyat, two marches distant, to have new
stocks put, by a good sany (who they heard was come thither),
to their long guns. Sulih and Eyad were tribesmen, of one
fendy, and of old acquaintance. The booth beside him was
of that elder Heteymy, the third companion in our autumn
journey. The man coming in soon after saluted me with a
hearty countenance ; and Salih forewent his day's journey to
the village for his guests' sake. This part of the vulcanic
country is named Hebrdn, of a red sandstone berg standing in
the midst of the lavas : northward I saw again the mountains
Bushra or Buthra. Having drunk of their leban, we gave the
hours to repose. The elder Heteymy's wife asked me for a
little meal, and I gave her an handful, which was all I had ;
she sprinkled it in her cauldron of boiling samn and invited me
to the skimming. The housewife poured off the now clajified
samn into her butter-skin ; the sweet lees of flour and butter
she served before us.

I had returned safe, therefore I said nothing; I could not
have greeted Salih with the Scandinavian urbanity, " Thanks
for the last time : " but his wife asked me, " Is Salih good,
Khalil ? " They had a child of six years old ; the little boy,
naked as a worm, lay cowering from the cold in his mother's
arms ; — and he had been thus naked all the winter, at an
altitude (here) of four thousand feet ! It is a wonder they
may outlive such evil days. A man came in who was clothed
as I never saw another nomad, for he had upon him a home-
spun mantle of tent-cloth ; but the wind blew through his
heavy carpet garment. I found a piece of calico for the poor
mother, to make her child a little coat.

When the evening was come Salih set before us a boiled kid,
and we fared well. After supper he asked me were I now
appeased ? — mcsguin ! he might be afraid of my evil remem-
brance and of my magical books. He agreed with Eyad and
Merjan that they, in coming-by again from Hayil, should return
to him, and then all go down together to Kheybar ; where he

80 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

would sell his samn for dates, to be received at tlie harvest.
Though one of the hostile Bishr, he was by adoption an
Heteymy, and with Eyad would be safe at Kheybar. — But how
might they find these three booths in the wilderness after
many days ? Salih gave them the shdr thus ; " The fourth day
we remove (when I come again from el-Hayat), to such a
ground : when the cattle have eaten the herb thereabout, we
shall remove to such other ; after ten or twelve days seek for
us between such and such landmarks, and drinking of such
waters." — He spoke to ears which knew the names of all bergs
and rocks and seyls and hollow grounds in that vast wilderness :
Eyad had wandered there in his youth. * * *

* * * When the morning's light wakened us we arose and
departed. We passed by the berg Hebran, and came to a vast
niggera, or sunken bay in the lavas : Eyad brought me to see the
place, which they name Bacdi, as a natural wonder. This is the
summer water station of those Sbaa households which wander in
the south with Misshel ; when the Auajy pitch at Baitha Nethil.
In the basalt floor, littered with the old jella of the nomads'
camels, are two ancient well-pits. Wild doves flew up from
them, as we came and looked in ; they are the birds of the desert
waters, even of such as be bitter and baneful to the Arabs. We
sat to rest out a pleasant hour in the cliff's shadow (for we
thought the Aarab beyond could not be far off) : and there a
plot of nettles seemed to my eyes a garden in the desert ! —
those green neighbours and homely inheritors, in every land, of
human nature.

We rested our fill ; then I remounted, and they walked for-
ward. Merjan was weary and angry in the midst of our long
journey. I said to him, as we went out, " Step on, lad, or let me
pass, you linger under the feet of the thelul." He murmured,
and turning, with a malignant look, levelled his matchlock at my
breast. So I said, " Eeach me that gun, and I will hang it at
the saddle-bow, this will be better for thee : " I spoke to Eyad
to take his matchlock from him and hang it at the peak. Eyad
promised for the lad, " He should never offend me again : for-
give him now, Khalil — because I already alighted — I also must
bear with him, and this is ever his nature, full of teen."
" Enough and pass over now ; — but if I see the like again, weled,
I shall teach thee thy error. Eyad, was there ever Beduwy who
threatened death to his rafik ? "— " No, by Ullah." " But this
(man), cries the splenetic lad, is a Nasrany, — with a Nasrdny
who need keep any law? is not this an enemy of Ullah?" At
that word I wrested his gun from him, and gave it to Eyad ;

DIFFICULT HAFIKS 81

and laying my driving-si lek upon tin- l;id (since t hisis the only
discipline they know at Medina), 1 swinged ln'm soundly
a moment, and made all liis l);ick smart, from be!

ill my .-inns; and the lad, set free, came and kiek.-d mo in
yillanniis manner, and making a weapon of his heavy head-cord,
IK> struck at me in tlx- face : then he caught up a huge stone
and was coming on to break my head, but in this I loosed myself
from Kyad. " \Ye have all done foolishly (exclaimed Kyad),eigh!
what will be said when this is told another day ?— here ! take thy
. MerjAn, but go out of Khalll's sight ; and Khalil befriends
with us, and mount again. Ullah ! we were almost at mischief;
and Merjan is the most narrow-souled of all that ever I saw, and

ways thus."

We moved on in silence ; I said only that at the next menzil
we would leave Merjan. He was cause, also, that we suffered
thirst in the way ; since we must divide with him a third of my
small herdsman's girby. Worse than all was that the peevish
lad continually corrupted the little good nature in Eyad, with
fanatical whisperings, and drew him from me. I repented of
my misplaced humanity towards him, and of my yielding to such
rafiks to take another way. Yet it had been as good to wink at
the lad's offence, if in so doing I should not have seemed to be
afraid of them. The Turkish argument of the rod might bring
such spirits to better knowledge ; but it is well to be at peace
with the Arabs upon any reasonable conditions, that being of a
feminine humour, they are kind friends and implacable enemies.
The Harra is here like a rolling tide of basalt : the long bilges
often rise about pit-like lava bottoms, or niggeras, which lie full
of blown sand. Soon after this we came to the edge of the lava-
iield ; where upon our right hand, a path descended to Thurgh-
rud, half a journey distant. " Come, I said, we are to go thither."
But Eyad answered, '' The way lies now over difficult lavas ! and,
Khalil, we ought to have held eastward from the morning: yet
I will go thither for thy sake, although we cannot arrive this
night, and we have nothing to eat." Merjan cried to Eyad not
to yield, that he himself would not go out of the way to Thiirgh-
rud. Eydd: " If we go forward, we may be with Aarab to-
night : so Salih said truly, they are encamped under yonder
;ntain." This seemed the best rede for weary men : I gave
:d the word to lead forward. We descended then from the
Harra side into a plain country of granite grit, without blade or
bush. ' Yet here in good years, said Eyad, they find pasture ;
but now the land is mahal, because no autumn rain had fallen
in these parts.'— So we marched some miles, and passed by the
(granitic) Thullan Buthra.

VOL. II. F

82 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

" — But where are we come ! exclaimed the rafiks, gazing
about them : there can be no Aarab in this khala ; could Salih
have a mind to deceive us ? " The sun set over our forlorn march ;
and we halted in the sandy bed of a seyl to sleep. They hobbled
the thelul's forelegs, and loosed her out in the moonlight ; but
there was no pasture. We were fasting since yesterday, and had
nothing to eat, and no water. They found a great waif root,
and therewith we made a good fire ; the deep ground covered us,
under mountains which are named Ethmdd (pi. of Thammad).

The silent night in the dark khala knit again our human
imbecility and misery, at the evening fire, and accorded the
day's broken fellowship. Merjan forgot his spite ; but showing
me some swelling wheals, "Dealest thou thus, he said, with thy
friend, Khalil ? the chill is come, and with it the smart."-
" The fault was thine ; and I bid you remember that on the
road there is neither Moslem nor Nasrany, but we are rufakd,
alchudn, fellows and brethren." — " Well, Khalil, let us speak
no more of it." Merjan went out — our last care in the night —
to bring in the weary and empty thelul ; he couched her to
bear off the night wind, and we closed our eyes.

The new day rising, we stood up in our sandy beds and were
ready to depart. We marched some hours through that dead
plain country ; and came among pale granite hills, where only
the silver- voiced siskin, Umm Sdlema, flitted in the rocky
solitude before us. We had no water, and Eyad went on
climbing amongst the bergs at our right hand. Towards noon
he made a sign and shouted, * that Merjan come to him with
our girby '. — They brought down the skin full of water, which
Eyad had found in the hollow of a rock, overlaid with a flat
stone ; the work, they supposed, of some Solubby (hunter).—
Rubbing milk-shards in the water, we drank mereesy and
refreshed ourselves. The height of the country is 4600 feet.
We journeyed all day in this poor plight; the same gritty
barrenness of plain-land encumbered with granitic and basalt
bergs lay always before us. Once only we found some last
year's footprints of a rdhla.

They watched the horizon, and went on looking earnestly
for the Aarab : at half-afternoon Merjan, who was very clear
sighted, cried out " I see zdl! " — zol (pi. azzudl), is the looming
in the eye of aught which may not be plainly distinguished;
so a blind patient has said to me, "I see the zol of the sun."
Eyad gazed earnestly and answered, ' He thought billah he did
see somewhat.' — Azzual in the desert are discerned moving in
the farthest offing, but whether wild creatures or cattle, or

nu;n IIKI 83

•il>, it cannot. U> fold. \\h--ii Ky;id and .\b-rj.:m had watehrd
awl;; said, "We see two men riding on one thelul ! "

Then they pulled of)' h.-istily their gun-leat (ire, and

blew the matches and put powder to the touch-holes of their
lonir pieces I saw in Kv;id a soil of liastn and trouble! "Why
thus?" I ,-isUed. " Hut they have seen us, and now they <
hither!"-- My two raftkfl \v«-nt. out, singing and leaping to the
muter, -n-d !<''> me \\-iih the thelul ; my secret arms put rne
out <>f all d«-:.il.t. I've and bye tliey returned s:iyinLr, that when
those rid the glance of their irnns they held off. — " Hut,

l.-t us not linger (they cried; in this neighbourhood : " t.hey
iu<. tinted the thelui together and rode from me. I folio
\\e;ikly on foot, and it came into my mind, that they would

:ke me.

The day's light faded, the sun at length kissed the horizon,

and our hope went down with the sun : we must lodge a.

out food or human comfort in the khdla. The Beduin

ics climbed upon all rocks to look far out over the desert,

and I rode in the plain between them. The thelul went fasting

in the mah&l this second day ; but now the wilderness began

to amend. The sun was sinking when Merjan shouted, ' He

had seen a flock J. Then Eyad mounted with rne, and urging

his thelul we made haste to arrive in the short twilight ere it

,ld be dark night : we trotted a mile, and Merjan ran beside

us. We soon saw a great flock trooping down in a rocky bay

of the mountain m front. A maiden and a lad were herding

them ; and unlike all that 1 had seen till now, there were no

s in that nomad flock. The brethren may havo heard the

flatter of our riding in the loose stones, or caught a sight of

three men coming, for they had turned their backs! Such

meetings are never without dread in the khala : if we had been

land-lopers they were taken tardy ; we had bound them, and

driven off the slow-footed flock all that night. Perchance such

thoughts were in Eyad, for he had not yet saluted them ; and

I tirst hail 3d the lad, — * Salaam aleyk ! ' He hearing it was

peace, turned friendly ; and Eyad asked him " Fen cl-madziba,

\\here is the place of entertainment?" — we had not seen the

'us The young Beduwy answered us, with a cheerful

alacrity, " It is not far off."

We knew not what tribesmen they were. The young man
left his si*t^r with the flock, and led on before us. It was past
prayer time, and none had said his devotion : — they kneeled
down now on the sand in the glooming, but (as strangers) not
together, and I rode by them ; — a neglect of religion which is
not marked in the weary wayfarer, for one must dismount to

84 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

say his formal prayers. It was dusk when we came to their
menzil ; and there were but three booths. It had been agreed
amongst us that my rafiks should not name me Nasrany.
Gently the host received us into his tent and spread down a gay
Turkey carpet in the men's sitting place, — it was doubtless his
own and his housewife's only bedding. Then he brought a vast
bowl, full of leban, and bade us slack our thirst : so he left us
awhile (to prepare the guest-meal). When I asked my rafiks,
what Anrab were these, Eyad whispered, "By their speech they
should be Harb."— "And what Harb?"— "We cannot tell
yet." Merjan said in my ear, " Repentest thou now to have
brought me with thee, Khalil ? did not my eyes lead tbee to
this night's entertainment ? and thou hadst else lodged again
in the khala."

The host came again, and insisted gently, asking, might he
take our water, for they had none. My rafiks forbade him with
their desert courtesy, knowing it was therewith that he would
boil the guest-meal, for us ; but the goodman prevailed : his
sacrifice of hospitality, a yearling lamb, had been slain already.
Now upon both parts the Beduins told their tribes : these were
Beny Salem, of Harb in Nejd ; but their native dira is upon the
sultdny or highway betwixt the Harameyn. It was my first
coming to tents of that Beduin nation ; and I had not seen
nomad hosts of this noble behaviour. The smiling householder
filled again and again his great milk-bowl before us, as he saw
it drawn low : — we drank for the thirst of two days, which could
not soon be allayed. Seeing me drink deepest of three, the
kind host, maazib, exhorted me with iglirtebig ! 'take thy
evening drink,' and he piously lifted the bowl to my lips.
" Drink ! said he, for here is the good of Ullah, the Lord be
praised, and no lack ! and coming from the southward, ye have
passed much weary country." JSydd : " Wellah it is all mahal,
and last night we were khlua (lone men without human shelter
in the khala) ; this is the second day, till this evening we
found you." — " El-hamd illah! the Lord be praised therefore,"
answered the good householder Eyad told them of the
ghrazzu. " And Khalil, said our host, what is he ? — a Mesliedy ?
(citizen of the town of Aly's violent death or " martyrdom ",
Mtshed Aly, before mentioned); methinks his speech, rdtn,
and his hue be like theirs." — "Ay, ay. (answered my rafiks),
a Meshedy, an hakim, he is now returning to Hayil." — " An
uncle's son of his was here very lately, a worthy man ; he came
from Hayil, to sell clothing among the Aarab, — and, Khalil,
dost thou not know him ? he was as like to thee, billah, as if
ye were brethren,"

A Niclirs HOSPITALITY 85

^Ye lay down to rest oiirsi-lves. An hour or two later this
roiis ma;r/il> and the shepherd, his brother, b'.re in a mighty
charger of rice, and th«» straining mutton In-aped upon it,; their
hospitality of the deser! \\:is more than one man might carry.—
Tlic nomad disli is .-«•! upon tin- carpet, or elfl€ on a ])ieceof tent-
clot h, t hat 110 fallen fflOTSels Blight D6 trodden doWB in the earth:
— and it' they B66 hut a little milk spilled (in this everlasting
dearth and indigence of all things), any horn Arabians will ho
out of countenance. I have heard some sentence of their Neby
blaming spilt milk. — The kind ma •'/.?!> called upon us, saying,
(linn ! lui'ilnm r/ftr/i •!'•<( r/j-AVA//. i-jh'/i ! ' rise, take your meat,
and the Lord give you life, and His Prophet.' We answered,
kneeling about the dish, l"il»h ////-//,•, 'May the Lord give thee
life ' :— the host left us to eat l>ut first Kyad laid aside three
of the hest pit ces, "for the man/,ib, and his wives; they have
kept bark nothing, he said, for themselves." The nomad house-
mothers do always withhold somewhat for themselves and their
children, but Kyad, the fine Beduin gentleman, savoured of
the town, rather than of the honest simplicity of the desert.
" Ah ! nay, what is this ye do? it needetli not, quoth the return-
ing host, wellah we have enough; ejlah ! only eat! put your
hands to it." "Prithee sit down with us," says Eyad. "Sit
down with us. 0 maa/ib, said we all ; without thee we cannot
eat" " 7-,V/"''/r/;, nay 1 pray yon, never." — Who among Bed inns
is first satisfied lie holds his hand still at the dish; whereas
the oa>i^ dweller and the townling, rises and going aside by
himself to wash his hands, puts the hungry and slow eaters out
of countenance. A P>eduwy at the dish, if he have seen the
t« wn, will rend ofT some of the best morsels, and lay them
ready to a friend's hand : — E\uxl showed me now this token of
a friendly mind.

Tiie Beduw are nimble eaters; their fingers are expert to

rend the m-.-at, and they swallow their few handfuls of boiled

rice or corn with that bird-like celerity which is in all their

la In Cupping1 with them, being a weak and slow eater,

when I had asked their indulgence, I made no case of this

since to enable nature in the worship of the Creator

ore than every apefaced devising of human hypocrisy. If

any man called me I held that he did it in sincerity; and the

Arabs commended that honest plainness in a stranger among

them. Tin-re is no second giving of thanks to the heavenly

: but rising after meat we bless the man, saying

(in this dira) Unaam Ullah alcyk, 'the lord be gracious unto

thee/ yd maazib. The dish is borne out, the underset cloth

is drawn, ami the bowl is fetched to us: we driiik and return

86 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

to our sitting place at the hearth. Although welfaring and
bountiful the goodman had no coffee ; — coffee Arabs are seldom
of this hospitality.

The guest (we have seen) should depart when the morrow
breaks ; and the host sends him away fasting, to journey all
that day in the khala. But if they be his friends, and it is the
season of milk, a good householder will detain the last night's
guests, till his jara have poured them out a draught. Our Beny
Salem maazib was of no half -hearted hospitality, and when
we rose to depart he gently delayed us. " My wife, he said, is
rocking the semila, have patience till the butter come, that she
may pour you out a little leban ; you twain are Beduw, but
this Meshedy is not, as we, one wont to walk all day 111 the
wilderness and taste nothing." — The second spring-time was
come about of my sojourning in Arabia ; the desert land flowed
again with milk, and I saw with bowings clown of the soul to
the divine Nature, this new sweet rabia. " UstibbaJi ! (cries the
good man, with the hollow-voiced franchise of the dry desert),
take thy morning drink."

- 1 speak many times of the Arabian hospitality, since of
this I have been often questioned in Europe ; and for a memorial
of worthy persons. The hospitality of the worsted booths, —
the gentle entertainment of passengers and strangers in a land
full of misery and fear, we have seen to be religious. I have
heard also this saying in the mouths of town Arabians, — " It
is for the report which passing strangers may sow of them in
the country : for the hosts beyond will be sure to ask of their
guests, 'Where lodged ye the last night; and were ye well
entertained ? ' :

We journeyed now in a plain desert of gritty sand, which is
called Shaaba ; beset with a world of trappy and smooth basalt
bergs, so that we could not see far to any part : all this soil
seyls down to the W. er-Rummah. We journeyed an hour and
came by a wide rautha. Rautha is any bottom, in the desert,
which is a sinking place of ponded winter rain : the streaming
showers carry down fine sediment from the upper ground, and
the soil is a crusted clay and loam. Rautha may signify garden,
— and such is their cheerful aspect of green shrubs in the
khala: the plural is ridth, [which is also the name of the
Wahaby metropolis in East Nejd], I asked Eyad, "Is not this
soil as good and large as the Teyma oasis? wherefore then has
it not been settled ? " — " I suppose, he answered, that there is
no water, or some wells had been found in it, of the auplin."
Gd likewise or khtfb'ra is a naked clay bottom in the desert,

Till-] 111 ! KITCIIKN" 87

where shallow water is pmuii d after heavy rain. A 7
Khubbera) i- I In- ancient name nf ;i. principal oasis in the N'
of K;i~im : I Came there later.

1 with ;i '.illed a hare; and none can better

handl-' a Btone than the Aarab: we halted and they made a
fin- of sticks. The southern A a rah have seldom a knife, Eyad
l'oiTo\\,-d my penknife to cut the throat of his venison; and
then he Omat in tli»' ha iv as it was. When their stubble firo
was burned out, Kyad tonic up his ha- re, roasted whole in the
skin, and broke and divided it ; :md \ve. found it tender and
ury meat. This is the hunter's kitchen: they stay not to
pluck, to Hay, to bowel, nor lor any tools or vessel; but that
•d which comes forth, for hungry men. In the
hollow of the carcase the Beduwy found a little blood; this
ho licked up greedily, with some of the fi-rth or cud, and mur-
mured the mocking desert proverb ' I am Shurma (Cleft-lips)
quoth the hare.' They do thus in ignorance; Amm Mohammed
had done the like in his youth, and had not considered that
the blood is forbidden. I said to him, " When a beast is killed,
although ye let some blood at the throat, does not nearly
all the gore remain in the body ? — and this you eat ! " He
answered in a frank wonder, " Yes, thou sayest sooth ! the

fore is left in the body, — and we eat it in the flesh ! well then
can see no difference." The desert hare is small, and the
delicate body parted among three made us but a slender break-
fast Eyad in the same place found the gallery (with two
holes) of a jerboa ; it is the edible spring rat of the droughty
wild a little underground creature, not weighing two

ounces, with very long hinder legs and a very long tufted tail,
silken pelt, and white belly ; in form she resembles the pouched
rats of Australia Eyad digged up the mine with his camel
stick and, snatching the feeble prey, he slit her throat with a
twig, and threw it on the embers; a moment after he offered
ns morsels, but we would not taste. The jerboa and the w&bar
ruminate, say the hunters ; Amm Mohammed told me, that they
are often shot with the cud in the mouth.

We loosed out the thelul, and sat on in this pleasant place
of pasture Merjan lifted the shidad to relieve her, and " Look !
laughed he, if her hump be not risen ? " — The constraint of the
lie, and our diligence in feeding her in the slow marches,
made the sick beast to seem rather the better. Seeing her old
brandmark was the dulbils, I enquired 'Have you robbed her
then from the Heteym ? ' Eyad was amazed that I should
know a wasm ! and he boasted that she was of the best blood
of the Jl'-ndt (daughters of) et-Ti (or Tlh)\ he had bought her

88 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

from Heteym, a foal, for forty reals : she could' then outstrip
the most theluls. Now she was a carrion riding beast of the
Ageyl ; and such was Eyad's avarice that he had sent her down
twice, freighted like a pack camel, with the Kheybar women's
palm-plait to Medina; for which the Beduins there laughed
him to scorn.— The Ti or Tih is a fabulous wild hurr, or
dromedary male, in the Sherarat wilderness. 'He has only
three ribs, they say, and runs with prodigious swiftness ; he
may outstrip any horse.' The Sherarat are said to let their
dromedaries stray in the desert, that haply they may be covered
by the Tih ; and they pretend to discern his offspring by the
token of the three ribs. The theluls of the Sherarat [an ' alien '
Arabian kindred] are praised above other in Western Arabia :
Ibn Rashid's armed band are mounted upon the light and fleet
Sher Aries. — Very excellent also, though of little stature, are the
(Howeytat) dromedaries in' the Nefud of el-Arish.

Eyad seemed to be a man of very honourable presence,
with his comely Jew-like visage, and well-set full black beard ;
he went well clad, and with the gallant carriage of the sheykhs
of the desert. Busy-eyed he was, and a distracted gazer : his
speech was less honest than smooth and well sounding. I
enquired ' Wherefore he wore not the horns ? — the Beduin
lovelocks should well become his manly [Annezy] beauty.'
EyAd : " I have done with such young men's vanities, since
my horn upon this side was shot away, and a second ball cropt
the horn on my other ; — but that warning was not lost to me !
Ay billah ! I am out of taste of the Beduin life : one day we
abound with the good of Ullah, but on the morrow our halal
may be taken by an enemies' ghrazzu ! And if a man have not
then good friends, to bring together somewhat for him again,
wellah he must go a-begging."

Eyad had been bred out of his own tribe, among Sham mar,
and in this dira where we now came. His father was a substan-
tial sheykh, one who rode upon his own mare ; and young Eyad
rode upon a stallion. One day a strong foray of Heteym robbed
the camels of his menzil, and Eyad among the rest galloped to
meet them. The Heteym an (nomads well nourished with milk)
are strong-bodied and manly fighters; they are besides well
armed, more than the Beduw, and many are marksmen. Eyad
bore before his lance two thelul riders ; and whilst he .tilted in
among the foemen, who were all thelul riders, a bullet and a
second ball cropt his braided locks ; he lost also his horse, and
not his young life. " Eyad, thou playedest the lion ! " — " Aha !
and canst thou think what said the Heteym ? — ' By Ullah let that
young rider of the horse come over to us when he will, and lie

SIIAMMAU HOOT! 89

with our hare. 'tu, that they may bring forth valiant sons."
IT- thought, since we saw him, that Kyada ilm Ajjueyn had
been in that raid with them.

" And when thou ha<t thy arrears, those hundreds of reals,
wilt thou Iniy thee other hala! ? wo shall see thee prosperous
and a sheykh again?" — " Prosperous, and a sheykh, it might
well lie, were I ;i not her; but my head is broken, and I do this
or that many times of a wrong judgment and fondly : — but

•me a Beduwy again, nay ! I love no more such ha/.-r

1 will buy and sell ;it llayil. If I sell sliirl -clot h and cloaks

rind iiiniiili/ti (kerchiefs) in the srik, all the Beduw will come to

moreover, being a Hediiwy, I shall know how to trade with

them for camels and smrdl cat 1 1*-. IJ.>ides I will lie Ibn Iiashid's

i (one of his rajajil) and receive a salary from him every

month, always sure, and ride in the ghraz/us, and in every one

••••thing!" — "We shall see thee thru a -hopkeeper! —

but the best life, man, is to be a Beduwy." Merjiin: " Wt-11

s,-,id Khalil, the best life is with the Beduw." Eydd: "But I

will none of it, and 'all is not KlnUhera and Tunis9;" — he

could not expound to me his town-learned proverb. *

* * * We set forward ; and after mid-day we came to six

Shatnmar booths. The sheykh, a young man, Braitshhn, was

known to Eyad. My rafiks rejoiced to see his coffee-pots in

the ashpit; for they had not tasted kahwa (this fortnight) since

we set out from K hey bar The beyt was large and lofty; which

i< the Shammar and Annezy building wise. A mare grazed in

• : a >ign that this was not a poor sheykh's household. The

who came in from the neighbour tents were also known to

: ; and I was not unknown, for one said presently, "Is not

Khalil, the Nasrany?" — he had seen me at Hayil. We

sho Id pass this day among them, and my rafiks loosed out the

tli"!ul to pasture. In the afternoon an old man led us to his

booth to drink more coffee; he had a son an Ageylyat Medina.

'• I was lately there, said he. and I found my lad and his comrade

eai ing their victuals Jtdf, wit hout samn ! — it is an ill service that

cannot pay a man his bread."

They mused seeing the Nasrany amongst them : — * Khalil, an
adversary of Ullah, and yet like another man ! ' Eyad answered
tli'-m in mirth, " So it seems that one might live well enough
although he were a kafir ! " * * *

' * * We heard that Ibn Rashid was not at Hayil. "The
Emir, they said, is ghn'zzui (upon an expedition) in the north

90 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

with the rajajll; the princes [as Hamud, Sleynian] are with
him, and they lie encamped at Heyennieti ", — that is a place of
wells in the Nefud, towards Jauf. The Shammar princes have
fortified it with a block-house ; and a man or two are left in
garrison, who are to shoot out at hostile ghrazzus : so that none
shall draw water there, to pass over, contrary to the will of Ibn
Rashid. We heard that Aneybar was left deputy at Hayil.—
The sky was overcast whilst we sat, and a heavy shower fell
suddenly. The sun soon shone forth again, and the hareem ran
joyfully from the tents to iill their girbies, under the streaming
granite rocks. The sheykh bade replenish the coffee pots, and
give us a bowl of that sweet water to drink — Braitshan's mother
boiled us a supper-dish of temnm : the nomad hospitality of
milk was here scant, — but this is commonly seen in a coffee
sheykh's beyt.

Departing betimes on the morrow we journeyed in a country
now perfectly known to Eyad The next hollow ground was
like a bed of colocynth gourds, they are in colour and bigness
as oranges. We marched two hours and came to a troop of
camels : the herds were two young men of Shammar. They
asked of the land backward, by which we had passed, * Was
the rabia sprung, and which and which plants for pasture had
we seen there ? ' Then one of them went to a milch naga to
milk for us ; but the other, looking upon me, said, " Is not this
Khalil, the Nasrany ? " [he too had seen me in Hayil] ! We
were here abreast of the first outlying settlements of the Jebel ;
and now looking on our left hand, we had a pleasant sight,
between two rising grounds, of green corn plots. My raiika
said, "It is Grussa, a corn hamlet, and you may see some of
their women yonder ; they come abroad to gather green fodder
for the well camels." A young man turned from beside them,
with a grass-hook in his hand ; and ran hither to enquire
tidings of us passengers. — Nor he nor might those women be
easily discerned from Beduw ! After the first word he asked
us for a galliun of tobacco; — ''But come, he said, with me to
our kasur ; ye shall find dates and coffee, and there rest your-
selves." He trussed on his neck what gathered herbs he had
in his cloak, and ran before us to the settlement. We found
their kasur to be poor low cottages of a single chamber — Gussa
is a [new] desert grange of the Emir, inhabited only three
months in the year, for the watering of the corn fields (here
from six-fathom square well-pits sunk in the hard earth), till
the harvest; then the husbandmen will go home to their villages :
the site is in a small wady

Here were but six households of fifteen or twenty persons,

TOBACCO TIPPLKI '.»!

in visited by tarki.-s (t> rdgy). Alt/ our host set before us
dates with some of his spring butter and lel.an : I wondered at
his ,-ilarrif y to welcome us, — as if we had been of old ucquant-
nmv ! rPlu-n lie told them, that ' La-t night he dr< amr.l of a
tarlsiy, whirl, should bring them tobacco ! ' — Even hereom- knew
me) and said, " Is not this Klialil, the Nasrfmy? and he has a
pnper from H>n Hash id, that none may molest him ; 1 myself saw
.ied by the Kmir " " How sweet, they exclaimed, is dokh an
when we taste it again !— wellah we are sherarib (tobacco tip-
plers) " I said, " Ye have land, why then do ye not sow it ? " —
" Well, we bib it; but to sow tobacco, and see the plant growing
in our fields, that were an unseemly thing, makrtiha ! " When we
left them near midday, they counselled us to pass by A yd/",
another like ' dira,' or outlying corn settlement; we might
juTive there ere nightfall. — Beyond their cornfields, I sawyoung
palms set in the seyl-straud : but wanting water, many were
already sere. Commonly the sappy herb is seen to spring in
any hole (that was perhaps the burrow of some \vild creature)
in the hard khala, though the waste soil be all bare : and the
(lussa husbandmen had planted in like wise their palms that
could not be watered ; the ownership was betwixt them and the
Beduw

As they had shown us we held our way, through a grey
and russet granite country, with more often basalt than the
former trap rocks. Eyad showed me landmarks, eastward, of
the wells es-Sdkf, a summer water-station of Shammar. Under
ji granite hill 1 saw lower courses of two cell-heaps, like those
in the II arras ; and in another place eight or more breast-high
wild flagstones of granite, set up in a row. — There was in heathen
times an idol's house in these forlorn mountains.

Seeing the discoloured he.id of a granite berg above us, the
rafiks climbed there to look for water ; and finding some they
filled our girby. When the sun was setting we came to a
hollow path, which was likely to lead to Agella. The wilder-
ness was again mahal, a rising wind ruffled about us, and clouds
covered the stars with darkness which seemed to bereave the
earth from under our footsteps. My companions would seek
now some sheltered place, and slumber till morning ; but I
encouraged them to go forward, to find the settlement to-
night. We journeyed yet two hours, and I saw some house-
building, though my companions answered me, it was a white
rock : we heard voices and barking dogs soon after, and passed
before a solitary nomad booth. We were come to the " dirat "
el- Agella. Here were but two cabins of single ground-cham-
bers and wells, and cornplots. The wind was high, we shouted

92 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

under the first of the house-walls ; and a man came forth who
bade us good evening. He fetched us fuel, and we kindled a
fire in the lee of his house, and warmed ourselves : then our
host brought us dates and butter and leban, and said, * He was
sorry he could not lodge us within doors, and the hour was late
to cook anything.' Afterward, taking up his empty vessels, he
left us to sleep.

We had gone, they said, by a small settlement, Hdfirat
Zeylul ; my companions had not been here before Hayil was
now not far off, Eyad said ; " To-morrow, we will set forward
in the jehcmma, that is betwixt the dog and the ivolf, — which is
so soon, Khalil, as thou mayest distinguish between a hound
and the wolf, (in the dawning)." — The northern blast (of this
last night in March) was keen and rude, and when the day broke,
we rose shivering ; they would not remove now till the warm
sun was somewhat risen. Yet we had rested through this night
better than our hosts ; for as we lay awake in the cold, we
heard the shrieking of their well-wheels till the morning light.
Merj&n : " Have the husbandmen or the Beduw the better life ?
speak, Khalil, for we know that thou wast brought up among
the Beduw." — "I would sell my palms, if I had any, to buy
camels, and dwell with the nomads." — "And I," said he.

As we set forward the a/jjfcj or sand-bearing wind encum-
bered our eyes. A boy came along with us returning to el-Kasr,
which we should pass to-day: — so may any person join himself
to what travelling company he will in the open Arabic countries.
The wilderness eastward is a plain full of granite bergs, whose
heads are often trappy basalt ; more seldom they are crumbling
needles of slaty trap rock. Before noon, we were in sight of
el-Kasr, under Ajja, which Merjan in his loghra pronounced
Ejja : we had passed from the mahal, and a spring greenness
was here upon the face of the desert There are circuits of the
common soil about the desert villages where no nomads may
drive their cattle upon pain of being accused to the Emir : such
township rights are called h'md [confer Numb, xxxv 2-5]
We saw here a young man of el-Kasr, riding round upon an ass
to gather fuel, and to cut fodder for his well camels. Now he
crossed to us and cried welcome, and alighted ; that was to pull
out a sour milkskin from his wallet — of which he poured us out
to drink, saying, " You passengers may be thirsty ? " Then
taking forth dates, he spread them on the ground before us, and
bade us break our fasts : so remounting cheerfully, he said,
" We shall meet again this evening in the village "

The rafiks loosed out the thelul, and we lay down in the sand
of a seyl without shadow from the sun, to repose awhile. The

TI1K WALL

chatted ; ;iml \\hi-n tln> village hoy h»-;inl

their talk, thai there waa a Dowlai at Medina,— " Kl-Medina!
criefl In1, /•"* tninii'lKi ! " K.ad an«l M'TJa.u looked up like
saints, with beat.ilir. \i ml told him, with a religions

' lli« had made himself ;i kalir! for kii'-\v In- not. that, el-Medina,
is one of the two sanctuaii Th»-y added that word <,f

the sighing Mohammed-m piety, " Ullah, (muiir-ha, the Lord
build ii]) B&edilia"— I have lizard some IJeduwy put tip
'mdbrak M>7/// ni-.\>:!>//, the oonohing place of the prop
dromedary,' [Christians in the Aral-ic border-lands will say in
their sleeve, Cllnli i/n!i«rrnlc.-li<i, * The Lord consume her with
fire!'] It was iie\\ lore to the poor lad, who answered half
aghast, that 'he meant not to speak anything amiss, and he took
refuse in Ullah.' I Ie drew out parched locusts from his scrip,
and fell to eat again : locu>t clouds had passed over the Jebel,
he said, two months before, but the damage had been light.

The tola, or new fruit-stalks of their palms, were not yet put
forth ; we saw also their corn standing green : so that the
harvest in Jebel Shammar may be nearly three weeks later than
at Kheybar and Medina.

At half-afternoon we made forward towards the (orchard)
walls of el-Kasr, fortified with the lighthouse-like towers of a
former age. Eyad said, 'And if we set out betimes on the
morrow, we might arrive in llayil, It-'Cl Imzza, about this time.'
The villagers were now at rest in their houses, in the hottest of
the day, and no man stirring. We went astray in the outer blind
lanes of the clay village, with broken walls and cavernous
ground of filthy sunny dust. Europeans look upon the Arabic
squalor with loathing : to our senses it is heathenish. Some
children brought us into the town. At the midst is a small
open place with a well-conduit, where we watered the thelul :
that water is sweet, but lukewarm, as all ground- water in
Arabia. Then we went to sit down, where the high western
wall cast already a little shadow, in the public view ; looking
that some householder would call us.

Men stood in their cottage thresholds to look at us Bednins:
then one approached, — it seems these villagers take the charge
in turn, and we stood up to meet him. He enquired, "What be
ye, and whence come ye, and whither will ye ? " we sat down
after our answer, and he left us. He came again and said
'.sum ! ' and we rose and followed him. The villager led us into
his cottage yard ; here we sat on the earth, and he brought us
dates, with a little butter and thin whey : when we had eaten
he returned, and we were called to the village Kahwa. Here
also they knew me, for some had seen me in Hayil. These

94 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

morose peasants cumbered me with religious questions ; till I
was most weary of their insane fanaticism

El-Kasr, that is Kasr el-Asheruwdt, is a village of two hundred
and fifty to three hundred souls ; the large graveyard, without
the place, is a wilderness of wild headstones of many genera-
tions. Their wells are sunk to a depth (the Beduins say) of
thirty fathoms !

We now heard sure tidings of the Emir ; his camp had been
removed to Hazzel, that is an aed or jau (watering place made
in hollow ground) not distant, eastwards, from Shekaky in the
Ruwalla country (where was this year a plentiful rabia), ' and
all Shammar was with him and the Emir's cattle.' They were
not many days out from Hayil, and the coming again of the
Prince and his people would not be for some other weeks.
These are the pastoral, and warlike spring excursions of the
Shammar Princes. A month -or two they lie thus in tents like
the Beduw ; but the end of their loitering idleness is a vehement
activity: for as ever their cattle are murubba, they will mount
upon some great ghrazzu, with the rajajil and a cloud of Beduw,
and ride swiftly to surprise their enemies ; and after that they
come again (commonly with a booty) to Hayil. — All the desert
above Kasr was, they told us, mahal. The rabia was this year
upon the western side of Ajja ; and the Emir's troops of mares
and horses had been sent to graze about Mogug. Eyad enquired,
* If anything had been heard of the twenty Ageyl riders from
Medina ! '

The villagers of Kasr are Beiiy Temim : theirs is a very
ancient name in Arabia They were of old time Beduins and
villagers, and their settled tribesmen were partly of the nomad
life ; now they are only villagers They are more robust than
the Beduin neighbours, but churlish, and of little hospitality.
In the evening these villagers talked tediously with us strangers,
and made no kahwa. Upon a side of their public coffee hall
was a raised bank of clay gravel, the man&m or travellers' bed-
stead, a very harsh and stony lodging to those who come in
from the austere delicacy of the desert ; where in nearly every
place is some softness of the pure sand. The nights, which
we had found cold in the open wilderness, were here warm in
the shelter of walls — When we departed ere day, I saw many
of these Arabian peasants sleeping abroad in their mantles ;
they lay stretched like hounds in the dust of the village street.

At sunrise we saw the twin heads of the Sumra Hayil,
Eyad responded to all men's questions; "We go with this
ILhalil to Hayil, at the commandment of the Bashat el-Medina ;

I'YAIVS LICHT IIKAI) 95

niul of his sealed letter to ll>n IJashid; but we

know not what is in the writing, which may be to cut off all
our heads!' — also I s;ii<l in my h«-;irt, ' The Turks are treacl
ous ! ' — .Hut should 1 break the Pasha's seal? No! I would
sooner hope fora fair event of that hazard. This sealed letter
of the governor of Medin.-i. \\ as opened after my returning
from Arabia, at a Hritish Consulate ; and it contained no more
than his commending me to ' Tin" Win/kit, ' Jim Iv'a.-Md, and the
request that ho would send me forward on my journey.

I walked in the mornings two hours, and as much at after-
noon, that my companions might ride ; and to spare their sickly
thelul I climbed to the saddle, as she stood, like a Beduwy :
but the humanity which I showed them, to my possibility,
hardened their ungenerous hearts. Seeing them weary, and
Ey&d complaining that his soles were worn to the quick, I
went on walking barefoot to Gofar, and bade them ride still. —
There I beheld once more (oh ! blissful sight,) the plum trees
and almond trees blossoming in an Arabian oasis. We met
with no one in the long main street ; the men were now in the
fields, or sleeping out the heat of the day in their houses. We
went by the Mandkh, and I knew it well ; but my companions,
who had not been this way of late years, were gone on, and so
we lost our breakfast. When I called they would not hear ;
they went to knock at a door far beyond. They sat down at
last in the street's end, but we saw no man. " Let us to
Hayil, and mount thou, Khalil ! " said the raiiks. We went
on through the ruins of the northern quarter, where I showed
them the road ; and come near the desert side, 1 took the next
way, but they trod in another. I called them, they called to
me, and I went on riding. Upon this Eyad's light head turn-
ing, whether it were he had not tasted tobacco this day, or
because be was weary and fasting, he began to curse me ; and
came running like a madman, ' to take the thelul.' When I
told him I would not suffer it, he stood aloof and cursed on, and
seemed to have lost his understanding. A mile beyond he
returned to a better mind, and acknowledged to me, that
* until he had drunk tobacco of a morning his heart burned
within him, the brain rose in his pan, and he felt like a
fiend.' — It were as easy to contain such a spirit as to bind
water !

I rode not a little pensively, this third time, in the beaten
way to Hayil; and noted again (with abhorrence, of race) at
every few hours' end their "kneeling places"; — those little
bays of stones set out in the desert soil, where wayfarers over-
taken by the canonical hours may patter the formal prayer of

96 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

their religion. — About midway we met the morning passengers
from Hayil ' and looking upon me with the implacable eyes of
their fanaticism, every one who went by uttered the same hard
words to my companions, ' Why bring ye him again ? ' Ambar,
Aneybar's brother, came next, riding upon an ass in a com-
pany ; he went to Gofar, where he had land and palms. But
the worthy Galla libertine greeted us with a pleasant good
humour, — I was less it might be in disgrace of the princely
household than of the fanatical populace We saw soon above
the brow of the desert the white tower-head of the great
donjon of the castle, and said Merjan, " Some think that the
younger children of Telal be yet alive therein. They see the
world from their tower, and they are unseen." Upon our
right hand lay the palms in the desert, es-Sherafa, founded by
Metasb : — so we rode on into the town.

We entered Hayil near the time of the afternoon prayers.
Because the Emir was absent, there was no business ! the most
shops were shut. The long market street was silent ; and their
town seemed a dead and empty place. I saw the renegade
Abdullah sitting at a shop door ; then Ibrahim and a few more
of my acquaintance, and lastly the schoolmaster. The unsavoury
pedant stood and cried with many deceitful gestures, " Now,
welcome ! and blessed be the Lord ! — Khalil is a Moslem ! " (for
else he guessed I had not been so foolhardy as to re-enter Ibn
Rashid's town.) At the street's end I met with Aneybar, lieu-
tenant now in (empty) Hayil for the Emir ; he came from the
Kasr carrying in his hand a gold-hilted back-sword : the great
man saluted me cheerfully and passed by. I went to alight
before the castle, in the empty Meshab, which was wont to be
full of the couching theluls of visiting Beduins : but in these
days since Ibn Rashid was ghrazzai, there came no more Beduins
to the town. About half the men of Hayil were now in the
field with Ibn Rashid ; for, besides his salaried rajajtl, even the
salesmen of the suk are the Prince's servants, to ride with him ,
This custom of military service has discouraged many traders of
the East Nejd provinces, who had otherwise been willing to try
their fortunes in Hayil.

Some malignants of the castle ran together at the news, that
the Nasrany was come again. I saw them stand in the tower
gate, with the old coffee-server ; " Heigh ! (they cried) it is he
indeed ! now it may please Ullah he will be put to death," —
Whilst I was in this astonishment, Aneybar returned ; he had
but walked some steps to find his wit. " Salaam aleyk ! "
" Aleykdm es-salaam" he answered me again, betwixt good
will and wondering, and cast back the head; for they have all

A PKINVKLY CHILI) 97

learned to strut like the Kiniiv. Aii"yl>:n- jr-ive mo his right

hand with a, lordly L'Taoo : then- wa- tin- old peace of bread and

lietwixt iis. --"From whence, Khalil ? and ye twain with

him what ho ye ?— well go to the coffee hall! and tln-ro we will

more." Aly el-A\id went by us, coming from his house,

and saluted me heartily.

NVht'ii we were seated with Aneybar in the great kahwa, he
ask IM! a«jain, "And you IJoduw with him, what be ye?"
responded with a craven humility : " We are Heteym." — "Nay
yo are not Heteym." — "Tell them, I said, both what ye be, and
who sent you hither." Einnl: " We are Ageyl from Medina,
and thi« I'a^ha sent ns to Kheybar to convey this Khalil, with a
letter to Ibn Rashid."— " Well, Ageyl, and what tribesmen?"
— "We must acknowledge we are Beduins, we are Auajy."
A)i''i/b<tr: "And, Khalil, where are your letters?" — I gave
him a letter from Abdullah es-Siruan, and the Pasha's sealed
letter. Aneybar, who had not learned to read, gave them to a
secretary, a sober and friendly man, who perusing the unflat-
tering titles " To the shcykh Ibn RaslM" returned them to me
unopened. — Mufarrij, the steward, now came in; he took me
friendly by the hand, and cried, " Sum ! " and led us to the
mothif. There a dish was set before us of Ibn Kashid's rusty
tribute dates, and — their spring hospitality — a bowl of small
camel leban. One of the kitchen servers showed me a piece
of ancient copper money, which bore the image of an eagle ; it
had been found at Hayil, and was Roman.

The makhzau was assigned us in which I had formerly
lodged ; and my rafiks left me to visit their friends in the
t • >w n. Children soon gathered to the threshold and took courage
to revile me. Also there came to me the princely child Abd
el- Aziz, the orphan of Metaab : I saw him fairly grown in these
three months; he swaggered now like his uncle with a lofty
but IK*! disdainful look, and he resembles the Emir Mohammed,
princely child stood and silently regarded me, he clapt a
hand to his little sword, but would not insult the stranger; so
.id : " Why returned, Khalil Nasrany ? " — " Because I hoped
it would be pleasant to thine uncle, my darling." — " Nay,
Khali I ! nay, Khalil ! the Emir says thou art not to remain
lu'i-e." 1 saw Zeyd the gate-keeper leading Merjan by the
hand ; and he enquired of the lad, who was of a vindictive
nature, of all that had happened to me since the day I arrived
at Khoybar. Such fjuostions and answers could only be to my
hurt : it was a danger I had foreseen, amongst ungenerous
Ar.v

YOU II. Q

98 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

We found Aneybar in the coffee-hall at evening : " Khalil,
he said, we cannot send thee forward, and thou must depart
to-morrow." — " Well, send me to the Emir in the North with
the Medina letter, if I may not abide his coming in Hayil." —
"Here rest to-night, and in the morning (he shot his one palm
from the other) depart ! — Thou stay here, Khalil ! the people
threatened thee to-day, thou sawest how they pressed on thee at
your entering." — " None pressed upon me, many saluted me." —
" Life of Ullah ! but I durst not suffer thee to remain in Hayil,
where so many are ready to kill thee, and I must answer to the
Emir : sleep here this night, and please Ullah without mishap,
and mount when we see the morning light." — Whilst we were
speaking there came in a messenger, who arrived from the
Emir in the northern wilderness : " And how does the Emir,
exclaimed Aneybar, with an affected heartiness of voice ; and
where left you him enca'mped ? " The messenger, a worthy
man of the middle age, saluted me, without any religious mis-
liking, he was of the strangers at Hayil from the East provinces.
Aneybar : " Thou hast heard, Khalil ? and he showed me these
three pauses of his malicious wit, on his fingers, To-morrow !
— The light !— Depart ! "— " Whither ? "— " From whence thou
earnest ; — to Kheybar : art thou of the din (their religion) ? "
— " No, I am not." — " And therefore the Arabs are impatient
of thy life : wouldst thou be of the din, thou mightest live
always amongst them." — " Then send me to-morrow, at my
proper charge, towards el-Kasim."

They were displeased when I mentioned the Dowla: Aneybar
answered hardly, " What Dowla ! here is the land of the Aarab,
and the dominion of Ibn Rashid. — He says Kasim : but there
are no Beduw in the town (to convey him). Khalil ! we durst
not ourselves be seen in Kasim," and he made me a shrewd
sign, sawing with the forefinger upon his black throat. —
"Think not to deceive me, Aneybar; is not a sister of the
Emir of Boreyda, a wife of Mohammed ibn Rashid ? and are
not they your allies ? " — " Ullah ! (exclaimed some of them),
he knows everything." — Aneybar : "Well ! well ! but it cannot
be, Khalil : how sayest thou, sherif ? "

— This was an old gentleman -beggar, with grey eyes, some
fortieth in descent from the Neby, clad like a Turkish citizen,
and who had arrived to-day from Medina, where he dwelt. His
was an adventurous and gainful trade of hypocrisy: three
months or four in a year he dwelt at home ; in the rest he rode,
or passed the seas into every far land of the Mohammedan
world. In each country he took up a new concubine ; and
whereso he passed he glosed so fructuously, and showed them

AN OLD OBNTLBMAN P.KCOAR OF MKhlNA 99

liis large letters patent from kings and primvs, and was of that
honourable presence, that he was bidden to the best houses, as
becomrth a religious sheykh of tin* I Inly City, and a nephew
of the apostle of I'llah: so lie received their pious alms and
returned to tin- illuminated Medina. Bokhara was a /•///.
flint for this holy man in his circuit, and so were all the CJ
beyond as far as (Viltul. In Mohammedan India, he went a
begging long enough to learn tho vulgar language. I
he visited Stambul, and followed the [not] glorious Mohammedan
arms in Kurope : and the Sultan of Islam had bestowed upon
him his imperial firman. — Jle showed me the dedalc engp

:ment, with the sign manual of the Calif upon a half
fat horn of court paper. And with this broad charter he was
soon to go again upon an Indian voya

- When Aneybar had asked his counsel, " Wellah yd el-
Noh'ifutk (answered this hollow spirit), and I say the same,
it cannot be; for what has this man to do in el-Ka.-im ? and
what does he wandering up and down in all the land; (he
added under his breath), wa yildiib el-bildd, and he writes up
the country." Aneybar: "Well, to-morrow, Khalil, depart;
and thou Eyad carry him back to Kheybar." — Eydd: "But it
would be said there, ' Why hast thou brought him again ? '
\vellah I durst not do it, Aneybar." Aneybar mused a little.
I answered them, " You hear his words; and if this rafik were
willing, yet so feeble is their thelul, you have seen it your-
selves, that she could not carry me." — Eydd : " Wellah ! she
is not able."- -u Besides, I said, if you cast me back into
hazards, the Dowla may require my blood, and you must every
enter some of their towns as Bagdad and Medina : and
when you send to India with your horses, will you not be in the
power of my fellow citizens?" — The Sherlf : "He says truth,
1 have been there, and I know the Engleys and their Dowia :
now let me speak to this man in a tongue which he will under-
stand,— he spoke somewhat in Hindostani — what ! an Engleysy
understand not the language of el-Hind? " — Aneybar: "Thou

1 (one of our subject Bed nine) ! it is not permitted thee to

nay ; I command you upon your heads to convey Khalil to
Kheybar; and you are to depart to-morrow. — Heigh-ho! it

ild be the hour of prayer! " Some said, They had heard
the itkin already: Aneybar rose, the Sherif rose solemnly and
all the rest ; and they went out to say their last prayers in the
great niesjid. * * *

* * * When the morning sun rose I had as lief that my night

100 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

had continued for ever, There was no going forward for me,
nor going backward, and I was spent with fatigues. — We went
over to the great coffee-hall. Aneybar sat there, and beside
him was the old dry-hearted sherif, who drank his morrow's
Sup with an holy serenity. " Eyad affirms, I said, that he
cannot, he dare not, and that he will not convey me again to
Kheybar." — " To Kheybar thou goest, and that presently/"

Eyad was leading away his sick thelul to pasture under Ajja,
but the Moghreby gatekeeper withheld him by force That
Moor's heart, as at niy former departure from Ilayil, was full
of brutality. " Come, Zeyd, I said to him, be we not both
"Western men and like countrymen among these Beduw ? " —
" Only become a Moslem, and we would all love thee ; but we
know thee to be a most hardened Nasrany — Kb alii comes (he
said to the bystanders) to dare us ! a Nasrany, here in the land
of the Moslemin ! Was it not enough that we once sent thee
away in safety, and comest thou hither again ! " Round was
this burly man's head, with a brutish visage ; he had a thick
neck, unlike the shot-up growth of the slender Nejd Arabians ;
the rest of him an unwieldy carcase, and half a cart-load of
tripes.

In the absence of the princely family, my soul was in the
hand of this cyclops of the Meshab. I sat to talk peaceably
with him, and the brute-man many times lifted his stick to
smite the kafir ; but it was hard for Zeyd, to whom I bad
sometime shown a good turn; to chafe himself against me. The
opinions of the Arabs are ever divided, and among tbree is
commonly one mediator : — it were blameworthy to defend the
cause of an adversary of Ullah ; and yet some of the people of
Hayil that now gathered about us with mild words were a mean
for me. The one-eyed stranger stood by, he durst not affront
the storm ; but when Zeyd left me for a moment, he whispered
in my ear, that I should put them off, whom he called in con-
tempt ' beasts without understanding, Beduw ! ' — " Ouly seem
thou to consent with them, lest they kill thee ; say * Mohammed
is the apostle of Ullah,' and afterward, when thou art come
into sure countries, hold it or leave it at thine own liking.
This is not to sin before God, when force oppresses us, and
there is no deliverance ! "

Loitering persons and knavish boys pressed upon me with
insolent tongues: but Ibrahim of Hayil, he who before so
friendly accompanied me out of the town, was ready again to
"befriend me, and cried to them, " Back with you ! for shame, so
to thrust upon the man ! O fools, have ye not seen him before ? "
Amongst them came that Abdullah of the broken arm, the boy-

FANATIC IIAVIL 101

f TTamud. I SAW liiin ;/n,\v taller, and now he wore a
lit tin l>,ick -sword ; winch 1m pulkd out a<_rain-f, in*-, ;
"0 thoti cursed Nasrany, that wilt not leave tliy miacreanc
— The one-eyed stranger whispered, " c«nt,ent th«-m ! it is hut
waste of bivath to reason with tin-in. Do ye — he said to the
people — stand back! I would speak with this r. I we

may yet see some happy event, it may please Ullah." I In
whispered in my ear, " High ! there will be some mischief ; only
pay thou wilt be a Moslem, and quit thyself of them. Show
thyself now a prudent man, and let me not see thee die for a
word ; afterward, when thou hast escaped their hands, settin
stna, sixty years to them, and yulaan Ullah abu-hum, the Lord
confound the fat her of them all! Now, hast thou conseii'
—ho ! ye people, to the mesjid ! go and prepare the muzayyin :
Khalil is a Moslem ! " — The lookers-on turned and were going,
then stood still ; they believed not his smooth words of that
obstinate misbeliever. But when I said to them, " No need to
go ! " — " Aha ! they cried, the accursed Nasrany, Ullah curse his
parentage ! " — Zeyd (the porter) : " But I am thinking we shall
make this (man) a Moslem and circumcise him ; go in one of
you and fetch me a knife from the Kasr : " but none moved, for
the people dreaded the Emir and Hamud (reputed my friend).
" Come, Khalil, for one thing, said Zeyd, we will be friends with
thee ; say, there is none God but the Lord and His apostle is
Mohammed : and art thou poor we will also enrich thee." — " I
count your silver as the dust of this meshab: — but which of you
miserable Arabs would give a man anything ? Though ye gave
me this castle, and the leyt el-mdl, the pits and the sacks of
hoarded silver which ye say to be therein, I could not change
my faith." — "Akhs — akhs — akhs — akhs ! " was uttered from a
multitude of throats : I had contemned, in one breath, the right
way in religion and the heaped riches of this world ! and with
horrid outcries they detested the antichrist.

— " Eigh, Nasrauy ! said a voice, and what found you at Khey-
bar, ha? " — " Plenty of dates 0 man, and fever." — " The more
is the pity, cried they all, that he died not there ; but akhs !
these cursed Nasranies, they never die, nor sicken as other men :
and surely if this (man) were not a Nasrany, he had been dead
long ago." — " Ullah curse the father of him ! " murmured many
a ferocious voice. Zeyd the porter lifted his huge fist; but
Aneybar appeared coming from the suk, and Ibrahim cries,
" Hold there ! and strike not Khalil."— Aneybar : " What ado is
here, and (to Zeyd) why is not the Nasrany mounted ? — did I
not tell thee ? " — " His Beduw were not ready ; one of them is
gone to bid his kinsfolk farewell, and I gave the other leave to

102 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

go and buy somewhat in the suk." — Aneybar: " And you people
will ye not go your ways ? — Sheytan ! what has any of you to do
with the Nasrany ; Ullah send a punishment upon you all, and
upon him also."

I said to Aneybar, " Let Eyad take new wages of me and
threaten him, lest he forsake me." — " And what received he
before ? " — " Five reals." — " Then give him other five reals.
[Two or three had sufficed for the return journey ; but this was
his malice, to make me bare in a hostile land.] When the
thelul is come, mount, — and Zeyd see thou that the payment is
made ; " and loftily the Galla strode from me. — Cruel was the
slave's levity ; and when I had nothing left for their cupidity
how might I save myself out of this dreadful country ? — Zeyd :
"Give those five reals, ha! make haste, or by God — ! " — and
with an ugh ! of his bestial anger he thrust anew his huge fist
upon my breast I left all to the counsel of the moment, for a
last need I was well armed; but with a blow, putting to his
great strength, he might have slain me. — Ibrahim drew me from
them " Hold*! he said, I have the five reals, where is that
Eyad, and I will count them in his hand, Khalil, rid thyself
with this and come away, and I am with you." I gave him the
silver. Ibrahim led on, with the bridle of the thelul in his
hand, through the market street, and left me at a shop door
whilst he went to seek Aneybar. Loitering persons gathered at
the threshold where I sat ; the worst was that wretched young
Abdullah el-Abeyd ; when he had lost his breath with cursing,
he drew his little sword again : but the bystanders blamed him,
and I entered the makhzan.

The tra desman , who was a Meshedy, asked for my galliur< and
bade me be seated ; he filled it with hameydy, that honey-like
tobacco and peaceable remedy of human life. " What tidings,
quoth he, in the world ? — We have news that the Queen of the
Engleys is deceased ; and now her son is king in her room."
Whilst I sat pensive, to hear his words ! a strong young swords-
man, who remained in Hayil, came suddenly in and sat down.
I remembered his comely wooden face, the fellow was called a
Moghreby, and was not very happy in his wits. He drew and
felt down the edge of his blade : so said Hands-without-head —
as are so many among them, and sware by Ullah : " Yesterday,
when Khalil entered, I was running with this sword to kill him,
but some withheld me ! " The tradesman responded, " What
has he done to be slain by thee ? " Swordsman: "And I am
glad that I did it not : " — he seemed now little less rash to
favour me, than before to have murdered me.

Aneybar, who this while strode unquietly up and down, in

TYRANNY OF ANEYI5AK 103

tln> side streets, (lu- would not be seen to attend nj>oii the
any), appeared now with Ibrahim at the, door. The Galla
deputy of ll>n Raahld entered and sat down, with a uii:
rattling of his aword of oflire in the scabbard, and laid
blade over his kn.-rs. .lbr;diirn r«-«jiicMl<-d liim to inaist no
more upon the uniquitous payment out of Klialil's empty purse,
or at least to make it less. " No, fire reals! " (exclaimed the
slave in authority.) lie looked very fiercely upon it, and clattered
the s\\ord. "(Jod will require it of thee ; and give me a
schedule of safe conduct, Aneybar." He granted, the trades-
man readied him an hand-breadth of paper, and Ibrahim
wrote, ' No man to molest this Nasrdny.' Aneybar inked
his signet of brass, and sealed it solemnly, ANEYBAR IBN
RASHID.

" The sherif (I said) is going to Bagdad, he will pass by the
camp of the Kmir : and there are some Beduw at the gate — I
liave now heard it, that are willing to convey me to the North,
for three reals. If thou compel me to go with Eyad, thou
knowest that I cannot but be cast away : treachery 0 Aneybar
ih punished even in this world ! May not a stranger pass by
your Prince's country ? be reasonable, that I may depart from
you to-day peaceably, and say, the Lord remember thee for
good." The Galla sat arrogantly rattling the gay back-sword
in his lap, with a countenance composed to the princely awe ;
and at every word of mine he clapped his black hand to the
hilt. When I ceased he found no answer, but to cry with
tyranny, "Have done, or else by God — " ! and he showed me
a hand-breadth or two of his steel out of the scabbard.
•• \Yhat! he exclaimed, wilt thou not yet be afraid?" Now
Eyad entered, and Ibrahim counted the money in his hand :
Aneybar delivered the paper to Eyad. — "The Emir gave his
passport to me." — " But I will not let thee have it, mount ! and
Ibrahim thou canst see him out of the town."

At the end of the suk the old parasite seyyid or sherif was
sitting square-legged before a threshold, in the dust of the
street. "Out, I said in passing, with thy reeds and paper ; and
I will give thee a writing ? " The old fox in a turban winced,
and he murmured some koran wisdom between his broken
teeth. — There trotted by us a Beduwy upon a robust thelul.
" I was then coming to you, cried the man ; and I will convey
the Nasrany to el-Irak for five reals." Eydd : " Well, and if it
!"• with Aney bar's allowance, I will give up the five reals, which
I hav«« ; and so shall we all have done well, and Khalil may
d«- part in peace. Khalil sit here by the thelul, whilst I and
this B-.'duwy go back to Aneybar, and make the accord, if it be

104 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

possible ; wellah ! I am sorry for thy sake." — A former acquaint-
ance, a foreigner from el-Hasa, came by and stayed to speak
with me ; the man was one of the many industrious strangers in
Hayil, where he sewed cotton quilts for the richer households.
"This people, quoth he, are untaught! all things are in the
power of Ullah : and now farewell, Khalil, and God give thee a
good ending of this adventure."

Eyad returned saying, Aneybar would not be entreated, and
that he had reviled the poor Beduwy. " Up, let us hasten from
them ; and as for Merjan, I know not what is become of him.
I will carry .thee to Gofar, and leave thee there. — No, wellah
Khalil, I am not treacherous, but I durst not, I cannot,
return with thee to Kheybar : at Gofar I will leave thee, or else
with the Aarab." — " If thou betray me, betray me at the houses
of hair, and not in the settlements ; but you shall render the
silver." — " Nay, I have eaten it ; yet I will do the best that I
may for thee."

We journeyed in the beaten path towards Gofar ; and after
going a mile, " Let us wait, quoth Eyad, and see if this Merjan
be not coming." At length we saw it was he who approached
us with a bundle on his head, — he brought temmn and dates,
which his sister (wedded in the town) had given him. Eyad
drew out a leathern budget, in which was some victual for the
way that he had received from the Mothif, (without my know-
ledge) : it was but a little barley meal and dates of ill kind, in
all to the value of about one shilling. We sat down, Merjan
spread his good dates, and we breakfasted ; thus eating together
I hoped they might yet be friendly, though only misfortunes
could be before me with such unlucky rafiks. I might have
journeyed with either of them but not with both together.
Eyad had caught some fanatical suspicion in Hayil, from the
mouth of the old Medina sherif ! — that the Nasara encroached
continually upon the dominion of the Sultan, and that Khalil's
nation, although not enemies, were not well-wishers, in their
hearts, to the religion of Islam. When I would mount ;
"Nay, said Eyad, beginning to swagger, the returning shall
not be as our coming ; I will ride myself." I said no more ;
and cast thus again into the wilderness I must give them line. —
My companions boasted, as we went, of promises made to them
both in Hayil. — Aneybar had said, that would they return
hither sometime, from serving the Dowla, they might be of Ibn
Rash id's (armed) service; — Eyad an horseman of the Emir's
riders, and Merjan one of the rajajil.

Two women coming out from Hayil overtook us, as they

COM1-; TO GOPAB 105

went t<» f Jofar. "The Lord he praised (said the poor creatures,
with .'i uoinanly kindness) that it was not worse. Ah' thon, — is
not thy name Klialil? — they in yonder town an- jnhiih'i.ni, m»-n
of tyrannous violence, that will cut, of]' a man's h* ad for a light
displeasure. KiLrh me! did not he SO that, is now Krnir, unto
all his l>rother\s rhildivn ? Thou art well r,ome froni them, i
are hard and cru< //. And what is this that the pe

cry, ' Out upon the Naxi'finy ! ' The Nasfira be better than tlm

lemin. Etfdd: "It is they tin m-. Ivs that are the Na:-
wellah, /7/-wA////.?w, full of malignity." " It is the Meshahada that
I hate, said Mrrjan. may L'llah confound them." It happ<
that a serving boy in the public kitchen, one of the patients
whom I treated (freely) at my l'«niM-r sojourning in ll/ivii, was
I In-other. '1 h.- Mesh;ihadies he said had l>e.-n of Aney-
bar's counsel against me. — Who has travelled in Phoenician and
Samaritan Syria may call to mind the inhumanity [the last
wretchedness and worldly wickedness of irrational religions, —
that man should not eat and drink with his brother !] of those
Persian or Assyrian colonists, the Metdwali.

Forsaking the road we went now towards the east-building
of Gofar : — the east and west settlements lie upon two veins
of ground-water, a mile or more asunder. The western oasis,
where passes the common way, is the greater ; but Eyad went
to find some former acquaintance in the other with whom we
might lodge. Here also we passed by forsaken palm-grounds
and ruinous orchard houses, till we came to the inhabited ; and
they halted before the friend's dar. Eyad and Merjan- sat
down to see if the good man (of an inhospitable race, the B.
Temim), would come forth to welcome us. Children gathered
to look on, and when some of them knew me, they began to
fleer at the Nasrany. Merjan cursed them, as only Semites can
find it in their hearts, and ran upon the little mouthing knaves
with his camel-stick ; but now our host coming down his alley
saluted Eyad, and called us to the house. His son bore in
my bags to the kahwa : and they strewed down green garden
stalks before the thelul and wild herbage.

A bare dish of dates was set before us ; and the good-man
made us thin coffee : bye and bye his neighbours entered.
All these were B. Temim, peasant-like bodies in whom is no
natural urbanity ; but they are lumpish drudgers, living honestly
of their own — and that is with a sparing hand. When I said to
one of them, " I see you all big of bone and stature, unlike the
(slender) inhabitants of Hayil ! " — He answered, dispraising
them, " The Shammar are Beduw ! " Whilst we sat, there came
in three swarthy strangers, who riding by to Hayil alighted here

106

WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

also to drink coffee. — They carried up their zika to the Prince's
treasury ; for being few and distant Aarab, his exactors were
not come to them these two years : they were of Harb, and their
wandering ground was nigh Medina. They mounted again
immediately; and from Hayil they would ride continually to
Ibn Rashld in the northern wilderness.

My rafiks left me alone without a word ! I brought in there-
fore the thelul furnitures, lest they should lead away their
beast and forsake me. Eyad and Merjan feared no more that
they must give account for me ; and their wildness rising at
every word, I foresaw how next to desperate, must be my
further passage with them : happily for my weary life the
milk-season was now in the land. * * *

CHAPTER VI

THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD

AT daybreak we departed from Gofar: this by my reckoning
was the first week in April. Eyad loosed out our sick thelul
to pasture; and they drove her slowly forward in the desert
plain till the sun went down behind Ajja, when we halted under
bergs of grey granite. These rooks are fretted into bosses and
caves more than the granite of Sinai : the heads of the granite
crags are commonly trap rock. Eyad, kindling a fire, heated
his iron ramrod, and branded their mangy thelul. — I had gone
all day on foot ; and the Ageylies threatened every hour to cast
down my bags, though now light as Merjan's temmn, which
she also carried. We marched four miles further, and espied a
camp fire; and coming to the place we found a ruckling troop of
camels couched for the night, in the open kh&la. The herd-lad
and his brother sat sheltering in the hollow bank of a seyl, and
a watch-fire of sticks was burning before them. The hounds of
the Aarab follow not with the herds, the lads could not see
beyond their fire-light, and our salaam startled them : then
falling on our knees we sat down by them, — and with that word
we were acquainted. The lads made some of their nagas stand
up, and they milked full bowls and frothing over for us. We
heard a night-fowl shriek, where we had left our bags with the
thelul : my rafiks rose and ran back with their sticks, for the
bird (which they called sirrttk, a thief) might, they said, steal
something. When we had thus supped, we lay down upon the
pleasant seyl sand to sleep.

As the new day lightened we set forward. A little further
we saw a flock of some great sea-fowl grazing before us, upon
their tal. shanks in the wilderness. — I mused that (here in
Nejd) they were but a long flight, on their great waggle wings,
from the far seabord ; a morrow's sun might see them beyond
this burning dust of Arabia! At first my light-headed rafiks
mistook them for sheep-flocks, although only black fleeces be

108 WANDERINGS IN AEABIA

seen in these parts of Nejd : then having kindled their gun-
matches, they went creeping out to approach them ; but bye
and bye I saw the great fowl flag their wings over the wide
desert, and the gunners returning. — I asked " from whence are
these birds?" — " Wellah from Mecca," [that is from the middle
Ked Sea bord.]

This soil was waste gravel, baked hard in the everlasting
drought, and glowing under the soles of our bare feet ; the air
was like a name, in the sun. An infirm travellefwere best to
ride always in the climate of Arabia : now by the cruelty of
my companions, I went always on foot ; and they themselves
would ride. And marching in haste, I must keep them in view,
or else they had forsaken the Nasrany : my plight was such
that I thought, after a few days of such efforts, I should rest
for ever. So it drew to the burning midst of the afternoon,
when, what for the throes- in my chest, I thought that the
heart would burst. The hot blood at length spouted from my
nostrils : I called to the rafiks who went riding together before
me to halt, that I might lie down awhile, but they would not
hear. Then I took up stones, to receive the dropping gore,
lest I should come with a bloody shirt to the next Aarab :
besides it might work some alteration in my rafiks' envenomed
spirits ! — in this haste there fell blood on my hands. When I
overtook them, they seeing my bloody hands drew bridle in
astonishment ! Merj&n : " Now is not this a kafir ! " — "Are ye
not more than kafirs, that abandon the rafik in the way ? "
They passed on now more slowly, and I went by the side of the
thelul. — "If, I added, ye abandon the rafik, what honourable
man will hereafter receive you into their tents ? " Merjan
answered, "There is keeping of faith betwixt the Moslemm,
but not with an enemy of Ullah ! "

They halted bye and bye and Eyad dismounted : Merjan who
was still sitting upon the thelul's back struck fire with a flint :
I thought it might be for their galliuns, since they had bought
a little sweet hameydy, with my money, at Hayil : but Eyad
kindled the cord of his matchlock. I said, "This is what?'*
They answered, " A hare ! " — " Where is your hare ? I say, show
me this hare ! " Eyad had yet to put priming to the eye of his
piece ; they stumbled in their words, and remained confused.
I said to them, " Did I seem to you like this hare ? by the life
of Him who created us, in what instant you show me a gun's
mouth, I will lay dead your hare's carcases upon this earth : put
out the match ! " he did so. The cool of the evening approached ;
we marched on slowly in silence, and doubtless they rolled it in
their hollow hearts what might signify that vehement word of

DESPERATE THOUGHTS

the N.isrfmy. " Look, I s;iid t.o lln-rn, rizellcyn ! you two vile
dastards, 1 tell you j)l,'iinly, that in what, mon anl OH drive me
to an e.\t ivniity ye are but dead dogs; and I will take
carrion thelul ! "

My adventure in such too unhappy 0886 had been \
desperate; nigher tlian the Syrian borders I saw no certain
relief. Syria wen- a .irn-at mark to shoot at, and terribly far off;
and yet upun :> good 1 helfil, fresh watered — for extremities make
men bnld, and the ofien escaping from < -I bad not

despaired to come forth ; and one watering in the midway, — if
I might once find water, had saved both thelfd and rider. — Or
should 1 ride towards Tey ma ; two hundred miles from hence ? —
But seeing the great Landmarks from this sid<-5 how might I know
them again !— and it' 1 found any Aarab westward, yet these
would be IVishr, the men's tribesmen. Should I ride eastward in
unknown diras? or hold over the fearful Nel'ud sand billows to
seek the Sherarat? Whithersoever I rode I was likely to faint
before I came to any human relief ; and might not str,
Aarab sooner kill the stranger, seeing one arrive thus, than
receive me ? My eyes were dim with the suffered ophthalmia,
and not knowing where to look for them, how in the vastness of
the desert landscape should I descry any Aarab ? If I came by
the mercy of God to any wells, I might drink drop by drop, by
some artifice, but not water the thelul.

Taking up stones I chafed ray blood-stained hands, hoping to
wash them when we should come to the Aarab ; but this was the
time of the spring pasture, when the great cattle are jezzin, and
oft-times the nomads have no water by them, because there is
leban to drink. Eyad thought the game turned against him !
when we came to a menzil, I might complain of them and he
would have a scorn. — " Watch, said he, and when any camel
stales, run thou and rinse the hands ; for wellah seeing blood on
thy hands, there will none of the Aarab eat with thee." — The
uriue of camels has been sometimes even drunk by town cara-
vaners in their impatience of thirst. I knew certain of the
Medanite tradesmen to the Sherarat, who coming up at mid-
summer from the W Sirhan, and finding the pool dry (above
Maan) where they looked to have watered, filled their bowl thus,
and let in a little blood from the camel's ear. I have told the
tale to some Beduins ; who answered me, '* But to drink this
could not help a man, wellah he would die the sooner, it must
so wring his bowels."

It was evening, and now we went again by el-Agella. When
the sun was setting, we saw another camel trocp not far off.

110 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

The herdsmen trotting round upon some of their, lighter beasts
were driving-in the great cattle to a sheltered place between two
hills ; for this night closed starless over our heads with falling
weather. When we came to them the young men had halted
their camels and were hissing to them to kneel, — ikh-kh-kh!
The great brutes fall stiffly, with a sob, upon one or both their
knees, and underdoubling the crooked hind legs, they sit pon-
derously down upon their haunches. Then shuffling forward
one and the other fore-knee, with a grating of the harsh gravel
under their vast carcase-weight, they settle themselves, and with
these pains are at rest : the fore bulk-weight is sustained upon
the zora ; so they lie still and chaw their cud, till the morning
sun. The camel leaves a strange (reptile-like) print (of his
knees, of the zora and of the sharp hind quarters), which may
be seen in the hard wilderness soil after even a year or two. The
smell of the camel is musk;ish and a little dog-like, the hinder
parts being crusted with urine ; yet is the camel more beautiful
in our eyes than the gazelles, because man sees in this creature
his whole welfare, in the khala.

The good herding lads milked for us largely: we drunk deep and
far into the night ; and of every sup' is made ere morning sweet
blood, light flesh and stiff sinews. The rain beat on our backs
as we sat about their watch -fire of sticks on the pure sand of the
desert ; it lightened and thundered. When we were weary we
went apart, where we had left our bags, and lay down in our
cloaks, in the night wind and the rain. I lay so long musing
of the morrow, that my companions might think me sleeping.
They rested in the shelter of the next crag, where I heard them
say — my quick hearing helping me in these dangers like the
keen eyesight of the nomads — that later in the night they would
lift their things on the thelul and be gone. I let them turn over
to sleep : then I rose and went to the place where the fire had
been.

The herdsmen lay sleeping in the rain; and I thought I
would tell the good lads my trouble. Their sister was herding
with them, but in presence of strange menfolk she had sat all
this evening obscurely in the rain, and far from the cheerful
fire Now she was warming herself at the dying embers, and
cast a little cry as she saw me coming, for all is fear in the
desert. ' Peace ! I said to her, and I would speak with her
brethren.' She took the elder by the shoulder, and rolling him,
he wakened immediately, for/in this weather he was not well
asleep. They all sat up, arid the young men, rubbing their
faces asked, "Oh, what — ? and wherefore would not the
stranger let them rest, and why was I not gone to sleep with

NKJHT RAIN AND TKori'.LK 111

niy rafiks ? " Theso \\viv manly lad* but rudu ; they hrul not,
-. Tin-ti that I was so much a stranger. I told them, that
those \sith me were Anm-y.y, AgryhVs, who had money to carry
me to Kheybar; but tlu-ir purpose was to I'm.-. -ike me, and
perhaps tlu-y would abandon me this night." — " Look you (said
they, holding their mouths for yawning, we are poor young
serving men, and have not much understanding in such things ;
but if we see them do thee a wrong, we will be for thee.
now and lie down again, lest they miss thee ; and fear nothing,
for we are nigh thee."

About two hours before the day Eyad and Merjan rose,
whispering, and they loaded the things on the couching thelul ;
then with a little spurn they raised her silently. " Lead out
(I heard Eyad whisper), and we will come again for the guns."
I lay still, and when they were passed forth a few steps I rose
to disappoint them : I went with their two matchlocks in my
hands to the herdsmen's place, and awaked the lads. The
treacherous raliks returning in the dark could not find their
arms : then they came over where I sat now with the herdsmen.
— "Ah! said they, Khalil had of them an unjust suspicion;
they did but remove a little to find shelter, for where they lay
the wind and rain annoyed them." Their filed tongues pre-
vailed with the poor herding lads, whose careless stars were
unused to these nice cases; and heartless in the rain, they
consented with the stronger part, — that Khalil had misconstrued
the others' simple meaning. "Well, take, they said, your
matchlocks, and go sleep again, all of you ; and be content
Khalil. And do ye give him no more occasion, said these
upland judges : — and wellah we have not napped all this long
night !ri

I went forward with the Ageylies, when we saw the morning
light ; Eyad rode. We had not gone a mile when he threatened
to abandon me there in the khala ; he now threatened openly
to shoot me, and raised his camel-stick to strike me ; but I laid
hand on the thelul's bridle, and for such another word, I said,
I would give him a fall. Merjan had no part in this violence ;
he walked wide of us, for being of various humour, in the last
hour he had fallen out with Eyad. [In their friendly discours-
ing, the asseverations of these Bishr clansmen (in every clause)
were in such sort ; — Merjdn: Wellah, yd ibn ammy, of a truth,
my cousin ! Eydd : Ullah hadik, the Lord direct thee ! — Wa
hydt rukbdtak, by the life of thy neck ! — Weysh aleyk, do as
thou wilt, what hinders.] — "Well, Khalil, let be now, said
Eyad, and I swear to thee a menzil of the Aarab is not far off,
if the herding lads told us truly."

112 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

We marched an hour and found a troop of camels. Whilst
their herdsmen milked for us, we met that Aly, who had enter-
tained us before at Gussa ! he was here again abroad* to gather
forage. He told us a wife of his lay sick with fever: "and
have you not a remedy, Khalil, for the entha " (female) ?
Eydd : "Khalil has kanakina, the best of medicines for the
fever, I have seen it at Medina, and if a man but drink a little
he is well anon : what is the cost, Khalil ? " — " A real." Aly :
"I thought you would give it me, what is a little medicine, it
costs thee nothing, and I will give thee fourpence ; did I not
that day regale you with dates ? " Yet because the young wife
was dear to him, Aly said he would go on to the Beduins'
menzil, and take up a grown lamb for the payment. We came
to a fertj of Shammar about nine in the morning. Eyad
remembered some of those Aarab, and he was remembered by
them : we heard also that -Braitshan's booths were now at half
an hour's distance from hence upon our right hand. This
Shammar host brought us to breakfast the best dates of the
Jebel villages, clear as cornelians, with a bowl of his spring
leban. Leaving there our baggage, without any mistrust (as
amongst Aarab), we went over to Braitshan's ferij, — my rafiks
hoping there to drink kahwa. A few locusts were flying and
alighting in this herbage.

Sitting with Braitshan in the afternoon, when Eyad had
walked to another booth, and Merjan was with the thelul, I
spoke to him of my treacherous companions, and to FerraJh, an
honest old man whom we had found here before. " What is,
I asked, your counsel ? and I have entered to-day under your
roof." They answered each other gravely, " Seeing that Khalil
has required of us the protection, we ought to maintain his
right." But within a while they repented of their good dis-
position, lest it should be said, that they had taken part with
the Nasrany against a ' Mislim ' ; and they ended with these
words, 'They could not go betwixt kliuidn (companions in the
journey).' They said to Eyad, when he arrived, ' That since he
had carried only my light bags, arid I was come down from
Hayil upon my feet, and he had received five reals to convey
me to Kheybar, and that in every place he threatened to
abandon me ; let him render three reals, and leave me with the
Aarab, and take the other two for his hire, and go his way.'
Eyad answered, " If I am to blame, it is because of the feeble-
ness of my thelul." — " Then, why, I exclaimed, didst thou take
five reals to carry a passenger upon the mangy carrion ? " The
Beduins laughed ; yet some said, I should not use so sharp

A SHAMMAR II 113

words with my wa\ fellow, — "Khalil, i ab love the

speaking." 1 knew tliis was true, and that, my plain right.
would seem less in their shallow eyes than th 'smooth

words, /.'</</: " Well, be it thus." "Thou hat heard hU
promise, said they, return with k/nid/,; thy way-brother, and nil
shall be well." — Kmply words of Arabs ! the sun Bel ; my rafiks
depart I'd, and I soon followed them.

Our Shammar host had killed the sacrifice of hospitality: his
mutton was served in a irival trencher, upon temmn boiled in.
the broth. But the m;m sat aloof, and took no part in our
evening t;dk ; whether d; I to see a kafir mi'ler his tent-

cloth, or Ixeaiise he misliked my Anne/y rat'iks. 1 told Aly he
might have the kanakina, a gift, so he helped me to my right
with Kyad : ' He would,' lie answered. — I wondered to see him
ttDCD at 1 in the b^ths of the Aarab ! )>ut his parents

were Mt-duw, :ind Aly left an orphan at Gusssi, had been bred up
there. He bought of them on credit a good yearling ram to
give me : they call it here tullyy and the ewe lamb ri'tkhnl.

Aly brought me his tnlly on the morrow, when we were ready
to depart; and said, " See, 0 Khalil, my present ! " — " I looked
for the fulfilment of your last night's words; and, since you
make them void, I ought not to help him in a little thing, who
recks not though I perish ! " The fellow, who weighed not my
grief, held himself scorned by the Nasrany: my bags were laid
upon the theliil, and he gazed after us and murmured. The
dewless aurora was rising from those waste hills, without the
voice of any living creature in a weary wilderness ; and I fol-
lowed forth the riders, Eyad and Merjan.

The gravel stones were sharp ; the soil in the sun soon glowed
as an hearth under my bare feet; the naked pistol (hidden
under my tunic) hanged heavily upon my panting chest ; the
air was breathless, and we had nothing to drink. It was hard
for me to follow on foot, notwithstanding the weak pace of
their thelul : a little spurn of a rider's heel and she had trotted
out of my seeing ! Hard is this human patience ! showing
myself armed, I might compel them to deliver the dromedary ;
but who would not afterward be afraid to become my rafik ?
If I provoked them, they (supposing me unarmed), might come
upon me with their weapons ; and must I then take their poor
lives ? — but were that just ? — in this faintness of body and
spirit I could not tell ; I thought that a man should forsake
life rather than justice, and pollute his soul with outrage. I
went training and bearing on my camel-stick, — a new fatigue
— to leave a furrow in the hard "gravel soil ; lest if those vile

VOL. n. H

114 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

spirited rafiks rode finally out of my sight, I should be lost in
the khala. I thought that I might come again, upon this trace,
to Braitshan's booths, and the Aarab I saw the sun mount to
high noon ; and hoped from every new brow to descry pasturing
camels, or some menzil of the Nomads.

An hour further I saw camels that went up slowly through a
hollow ground to the watering. There I came up to my rafiks :
they had stayed to speak with the herdsmen, who asked of the
desert behind us. The Nomads living in the open wilderness
are greedy of tidings ; and if herdsmen see passengers go by
peaceably in the desert they will run and cry after them, * What
news, ho ! — Tell us of the soil, that ye have passed through ? —
Which Aarab be there ? — Where lodge they now ? — Of which
waters drink they ? — And, the face of them is whitherward ? —
Which herbs have ye seen ? and what is the soil betwixt them
and us? found ye any bald places (mabal)? — With whom
lodged ye last night ? — heard ye there any new thing, or as ye
came by the way ? " Commonly the desert man delivers him-
self after this sort with a loud suddenness of tongue, as he is
heated with running ; and then only (when he is nigher hand)
will he say more softly, 'Peace be with thee.' — The passengers
are sure to receive him mildly ; and they condescend to all his
asking, with WellaTi Ful&n ! l Indeed thou Such-an-one.' And
at every meeting with herdmen, they say over, with a set face,
the same things, in the same words, ending with the formal wa
ent s6limt * and thou being in peace.' — The tribesman hardly
bids the strangers farewell, when he has turned the back ; or he
stands off, erect and indifferent, and lets pass the tarkieh.

I stayed now my hand upon the thelul ; and from the next
high grounds we saw a green plain before us. Our thirst was
great, and Eyad showed with his finger certain crags which
lay beyond ; ' We should find pools in them, he said (after the
late showers) : but I marked in the ground [better than the
inept Beduin rafiks] that no rain had fallen here in these days.
We found only red pond- water, — so foul that the thirsting thelul
refused to drink. I saw there the forsaken site of a winter
encampment : the signs are shallow trenching, and great stones
laid about the old steads of their beyts. Now we espied camels,
which had been hidden by the hollow soil, and then a worsted
village ! My rafiks considered the low building of those tents,
and said, " They must be of Harb ! " As we approached they
exclaimed, " But see how their beyts be stretched nigh together !
they are certainly Heteym."

We met with an herdsman of theirs driving his camels to
water, and hailed him — "Peace ! and ho ! what Aarab be those

A TTETEYM BffGAMflOliT 115

, " I

(am :IM) Ilarby dwelling with this IVrij, and they

in to doubt ! f<>r wn> they of !

(enemies of the Dmvla at, Kheybar), he thought he wer
danger Yet, now 1 hey could n<.: ; it' he turned from

them, his mamry them] nii-.-hf. be rjuiekly overtaken. Tl«-
Ageylies rode on therefore, wiih ihe formal Countenance
that arrive at a nomad im-n/il. The loud dogs of unp-

inent leapt out against us with hideous aiVray ; and as we <•
marching by the beyts, the men and the haivem who sat within,
onlv moving their eyes, silently regarded us passing itrao
We halted In-fore the greater booth in the row, which was of
ten or twelve tents.

I'lyad and Meijan alighted, set down the parks and tied up
the knee of the thelul. Th^n we walked together, with the
solemnity of guests, to the open half of the tent, which is the
men's apartment; here at the right hand looking forth: it is
not always on the same side among the people of the desert.
We entered, and this was the sheykh's beyt. Five or six men
were sitting within on the sand, with an earnest demeanour
(and that was because some of them knew me) ! They rose to
receive us, looking silently upon me, as if they would say, "Art
not thou that Nasrany ? "

The nomad guest — far from his own — enters the strange beyt
of hospitality, with demure looks; in which should appear some
gentle token of his own manly worth. We sat down in the
booth, but these uncivil hosts — Heteymies — kept their uneasy
silence. They made it strange with us ; and my rafiks beat their
camel-sticks upon the sand and looked down : the Heteymies
gazed side-long and lowering upon us. At length, despising
their mumming, and inwardly burning with thirst, I said to
the sly fellow who sat beside me, a comely ill-blooded Heteymy
and the host's brother, " Edctony md, give me a little water
to drink." He rose unwillingly ; and fetched a bowl of foul
clay-water When I only sipped this unwholesome bever :
" Rueyht (he said maliciously), hast allayed thy thirst ? " My
companions asked for the water, and the bowl was sent round.
"Drink! said the Heteymies, for there is water enough." At
length there was set before us a bowl of mereesy shards and
a little leban : then first they broke their unlucky silence. " I
think we should know thee (quoth he of the puddle water) ; art
not thou the Nasrany that came to Kasim's from Ibn Rashid ? "
They had alighted yesterday : they call the ground Aul, of
those crags with water. The (granitic) landscape is named
Ghrdlfa; and Sfd, of a plutonic mountain, which appeared

116 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

eastward over the plain seven miles distant; and they must
send thither to fetch their water. The altitude was here 4600
feet. The flocks were driven in at the going down of the sun ;
and bye and bye we saw Maatuk — that was our host's name —
struggling to master a young ram. Eyad sent Merjan with
the words of course, " Go and withhold him." Merjan made
as though he would help the ram, saying, with the Arabs'
smooth (effeminate) dissimulation, ' It should not be, nay by
Ullah, we would never suffer it.' " Oho ! young man, let me
alone, answered the Heteymy, may I not do as I please with
mine own ? " and he drew his slaughter-sheep to the woman's
side. — Two hours later Maatuk bore in the boiled ram brittled,
upon a vast trencher of temmn. He staggered under the load
and caught his breath, for the hospitable man was asthmatic.

Eyad said when we were sitting alone, " Khalil we leave
thee here, and el-Kasim lies behind yonder mountains ; these
are good folk, and they will send thee thither." — " But how
may ye, having no water-skin, pass over to the Auajy ? " —
" Well, we will put in to Thurghrnd for a girby." — " Ullah re-
member your treachery, the Aarab will blame you who abandon
your rafik, also the Pasha will punish you ; and as you have
robbed me of those few reals he may confiscate some of your
arrears." — " Oh say not so, Khalil ! in this do not afflict me ;
and at our departure complain not : let not the hosts hear your
words, or they will not bring you forward upon your journey."

When the rest were sleeping I saw Maatuk go forth ; — I
thought this host must be good, although an Heteymy. I went
to him and said I would speak with him. — " Shall we sit down
here then, and say on," — for the Arabs think they may the better
take counsel in their weak heads when sitting easily upon the
beled. I told him how the rafiks had made me journey hitherto
on my feet (an hundred miles) from Hayil ; how often they had
threatened in the midst of the khala to forsake me, and even
to kill me : should I march any longer with them ? — no ! I was
to-day a guest in his tent ; I asked him to judge between us,
and after that to send me safely to el-Kasim. — " All this will I
do ; though I cannot myself send thee to el-Kasim, but to some
Harb whose tents are not far from us, eastward ; and we may find
there someone to carry thee thither. Now, when the morning ia
light and you see these fellows ready to set forward, then say to
me, dakhttak, and we shall be for thee, and if they resist we will
detain their thelul." — " Give thy hand, and swear to me." — " Ay,
I swear, said he, wullah, wullah ! " but he drew back his hand *
for how should they keep touch with a Nasrany ! — But in the

r\KTI\:; WITH THE FALSE RAFlK 117

ni^lit time, whilst I slept, my companions also held their council
with .Maatuk: and that, was as between men of the same n-li^ion,
and Maatuk betrayed me for his pipeful of sweet hameyd;.

When it was day those lafiks laid my bags upon the theli'd,
and I saw K\ ad give to Maatuk a little golden hameydy, for
which the Heteymy thanked him benignly. Then, tating up
their mantles and matchlocks, they raised the thelul with a
spurn : Mrrjan having the bridle in his hand led forth, with
nwflini (i/i-i/lc. As they made the first steps, I said to Maatuk,
" My host detain them, and «n« <1<ik1iil-ak! — do justly." — " Ugh !
go with them, answered Maatuk (making it strange), what
justice wouldst thou have, Nasrany ? " — "Where be thy last
niirht 's promises ? Is there no keeping faith, Heteymy ? listen !
1 will not go with them." But I saw that my contention would
be vain ; for there was some intelligence between them.

When Kyad and Merjan were almost out of sight, the men
in the tent cried to me, "Hasten after them and your bags, or
they will bo quite gone." — " I am your dakhil, and you are for-
sworn ; but I will remain here." — "No ! " — and now they began
to thrust me (they were Heteym). Maatuk caught up a tent-
stake, and came on against me ; his brother, the sly villain, ran
upon me from the backward with a cutlass. " Ha ! exclaimed
Maatuk, I shall beat out his brains."—" Kill him— kill him ! "
cried other frenetic voices (they were young men of Harb and
Annezy dwelling in this ferlj). "Let me alone, cries his
brother, and I will chop off the head of a cursed Nasrany."
"I cannot, I said to them, contend with so many, though ye
be but dastards ; put down your weapons. And pray good
woman ! [to Maatuk's wife who looked to me womanly over her
curtain, and upbraided their violence] pour me out a little lebaii ;
and let me go from this cursed place." — " Ah ! what wrong, she
said to them, ye do to chase away the stranger! it is harram,
and, Maatuk, he is thy dakhil :" she hastened to pour ine out
to drink. " Drink ! said she, and handed over the bowl, drink !
and may it do thee good ; " and in this she murmured a sweet
proverb of their dira, widd d-ghrarfb ahlhu, " the desire of the
stranger is to his own people; speed the stranger home."

"Up, I said, Maatuk, and come with me to call the Agey-
lies back, my strength is lost, and alone I cannot overtake them."
— "I come, and wellah will do thee right with them." — When
we had gone hastily a mile, I said : " I can follow no further,
and must sit down here ; go and call them if you will." Great
is their natural humanity : this Heteymy, who was himself
infirm, bade me rest ; and he limped as fast as he might go and
shouted after them, — he beckoned to my late rafiks ! and they

118 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

tardily returned to us. " Maatuk, I said, this is the end of my
journey to-day : Eyad shall give me here Aneybar's schedule
of safe conduct, and he shall restore me three reals ; also,
none of you chop words with me, for I am a weary man, whom
ye have driven to extremities." — Maatuk (to Eyad): "What
say you to this ? it seems your raiik is too weary to go any
more, will ye carry him then on the thelul ? " — " We will not
carry him ; we can only sometimes ride upon her ourselves ;
yet I will carry him— it is but half a day — to Thurghrud, and
leave him there ! " This I rejected. Maatuk : " Well, he shall
stay with us ; and I will send Khalil forward to the Harb with
Jbn Ndhal, for his money. Now then I say restore his money,
let it be two reals, and the paper from Ibn Rashid, — what, man !
it is his own." — Eydd : " I am willing to give up the paper to
Khalil, so he write me a discharge, which may acquit me before
the Pasha ; but I will not restore a real of the silver, I have
spent it, — what, man ! wouldst thou have my clothes ? " —
Maatuk : " We shall not let thee depart so ! give Khalil one
real, and lay down the schedule." — Eydd: "Well, I accept":
he took out a crown, and "This is all I have left, said he ; let
Khalil give me fourpence, for this is fourpence more than
the mejidie." — "You may think yourselves well escaped for
fourpence, which is mine own : take that silver, Maatuk, arrabun
(earnest-money) of the three reals for conveying me as thou
said'st to the Harb." He received it, but the distrustful wretch
made me give him immediately the other two. I recovered
thus Aneybar's safe-conduct, and that was much for my safety
in the wild country. Eyad insisted for his written discharge,
and I wrote, " Eyad, the Ageyly, of Bejaida, Bishr, bound for
five reals by Abdullah Siruan, lieutenant at Kheybar, to con-
vey me to Hayil, and engaged there by Aneybar, Ibn Rashid's
deputy, for which he received other five, to cany me again to
Kheybar, here treacherously abandons me at Aul, under Sfa, in
the Sham mar dira." The Ageylies took the seal from my hand,
and set it to themselves twenty times, to make this instru-
ment more sure : then Maatuk made them turn back to the
menzil with my baggage. So Eyad and Merjan departed;
yet not without some men's crying out upon them from the
tents, for their untruth to the rafik.

These Heteymies were heavy-hearted fanatics, without the
urbanity of Beduins : and Maatuk had sold me for a little to-
bacco. For an hour or two he embalmed his brain with the
reeking drug; after that he said, " Khalil, dakhil-a/e, hast thou
not, I beseech thee, a little dokhan ? ah ! say not that thou hast

IBN N.UTAL 110

none; L'ive mo but a litt le, ;md I will n-,-,fore 1 »S6 three

iTv thee on my thelul to Ilni I ,o no

(lokli/iM, tln'i;-!i you rill, of!' my lu-ad." — " I\

g;illiun < I 1 v,i!l forgive ''. .-jill!" — Had I bought a

li!tl«- : at Ilayil, 1 h'.d SJMM! well.

One Aniir/.y and three Jlarb beyts were in tin's ILeteymy
ferij. Some of thos-- ine in the afternoon, what

tribesmen were the rafiks that, hud i'nr-aken me. I answered,
" Ai;;ijv and ISrpujy of Bishr." — "JIadsfc thou said this before
to us, they had not parted so! we had seized their thelul, for
Ihev aiv //«:///, :md wo have not eaten with them." Said one:
" \\ ''hiist i!uy 1 !!<ed I thought the speech of the younger
sounded thus, ay billah it was 15ejaijy." — "You might overtake

a."— "Which way went they'? "— " To Baitha Nethfl, and
tftiii thence they will cross to the Auajy." Eyful had this
charge, from K hey bar to fetch the Siruan's and the Bishy's
thelfils. [Although those Beduw were enemies of the Dowla,
the A gey I dromedaries had been privately put out to pasture
among them.] In that quarter of the wilderness was sprung
(this year) a plentiful rabia, after the autumnal rains, " so that
the camels might lie down with their fills at noonday." — "How
now ? (said one to another) wilt thou be my rafik if the 'bil
come home this evening ? shall we take our theluls and ride after
them : they will journey slowly with their mangy beast; if the
Lord will we may overtake them, and cut their throats." —
" Look (I said) I have told you their path, go and take the thelul
if you be able, but you shall not do them any hurt." I was in
thought of their riding till the nightfall : but the camels came
not.

Of Ibn Nahal's Aarab they had no late tidings. They spoke
much in my hearing of Ibn Nahal ; and said the hareem — that

• the best hearted in this encampment, "His tent is large,
so large ! and he is rich, so rich, — ouf ! all there is liberality :
and when thou comest to his tent say, ' Send me, 0 Ibn Nahal,
to el-Kasim', and he will send thee."

Maatnk and his evil-eyed brother were comely ; and their

:- — she dwelt in Maatuk's beyt — was one of the goodliest
works of nature ; only (such are commonly the Heteyman) not
well coloured. She went freshly clad ; and her beauty could
not be hid by the lurid face-clout : yet in these her flowering
years of womanhood she remained unwedded ! The thin-witted
young Annezy man of the North, who sat all day in the sheykh's
beyt, fetched a long breath as oft as she appeared — as it were a
dream of their religion — in our sight ; and plucking my mantle
he would say, " Sawest thou the like ere now ! " This sheykhess.

120 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

when she heard their wonted oks ! and ahs ! cast upon them
her flagrant great eyes, and smiled, without any disdain. — She,
being in stature as a goddess, yet would there no Beduwy
match with her (an Heteymia) in the way of honourable
marriage ! But dissolute Beduins will mingle their blood out
of wedlock with the beautiful Heteymias ; and I have heard
the comely ribald Eyad mock on thus, making his voice small
like a woman's, — " Then will she come and say humbly to the
man, 'Marry me, for I am with child, and shield me from
the blame."3

There was an Heteymy in this menzil who returned after an
absence : I enquired, * Where had he been in the meanwhile ?'
— "'Wellah, at el-Hayat : it is but one long day upon the thelul,
and I have wedded there a (black) wife." — " Wherefore thus ? "
— "Wellah I wished for her." — "And what was the bride
money?" — "I have spent 'nothing." — "Or gave she thee any-
thing ? " — " Ay billah ! some palms." — " She has paid for
thee ! " " Well, why not ? "— " Will not thy children be black
like slaves, dbid? " — " She is blackish-red, her children will be
reddish." — "And what hast thou to do with village wives ? " —
" Eigh ! I shall visit her now and then ; and when I come there
go home to mine own house : " — and cries the half-witted
nomad, "Read, Khalil, if this thing which I have done be
lawful or unlawful ? " [The negro village el-Hayat is in the
S.-E. borders of the (Kheybar) Harra ; and a journey from
thence toward Medina is the palm hamlet Howeyat. The
(Annezy) Beduin landlords in both settlements were finally ex-
pulsed by Abeyd Ibn Rashid ; because not conforming them-
selves to the will of the Emir, they had received their Ateyba
neighbours — who were his enemies — as their daJcMls, and would
have protected them against him.]

The camels were azab, Maatuk's thelul was with them ; and
till their coming home we could not set out for Ibn Nahal.
Some Solubba rode-in one morrow on their asses; and our
people gave them pots and kettles (which are always of brass),
to carry away, for tinning. I found two young Solubbies
gelding an ass behind the tents ! — (the Aarab have only entire
horses). The gipsies said laughing, * This beast was an ass
overmuch, and they had made him chaste ! ' I found an old
Solubby sitting in Maatuk's tent, a sturdy greybeard ; his
grim little eyes were fastened upon me. I said to him, " What
wouldst thou ? " — " I was thinking, that if I met with thee alone
in the khala, I would kill thee."— "Wherefore, old tinker?"—
" For thy clothing and for any small things that might be with
thee, Nasrany ; — if the wolf found thee in the wilderness, wert

Tin; BTRANQBB IIOMK" 121

thou not afr;iid?" -The Solubl.a ofl'.-nd no m;ui, and none do
tin-in hurt. I enquired of these; " l> it tru--, that ye <-at the
sheep or camel which is dead of itself ? "— " \Ve eat it, and how
else might we that have no cattle cat meat, in the n \ the

Aaral.! \\Vllah, Khalil, is this halal or harmm ?"

A day or two alter Maaluk was for no nmn- ^"in.u' 1o Hm
N;ihal ; he said, "Shall I carry t her. to el-Ilayat ? OfelM I might
leave thee at Seniira or at Selrynia." l>ut 1 answ.-ivd,
Jbn NYdial ;" and his good wife Noweyr, poor woman, looking
over her tent cloth, spoke for me every day ; " Oh ! said she, ye
are not good, and Maatuk, Maatuk! why hinder Khalil ? per-
form thy promise, and wif/tl cl-<jh r<i rib faledhlt <«iti cl-<'ijn<tl>i/ :
(it is a refrain of the Nomad maidens 'speed the stranger on
his way to his own people ' ; or be it, * the heart of the stranger
is in his own countiy, and not in a strange land'.") The good
hareem her neighbour! answered with that pious word of iana-
tical Arabia, ' We have a religion, and they have a religion ;
every man is justified in his own religion.' Noweyr was one
of those good women that bring the blessing to an household.
(Sometimes I saw her clay-pale face in their tent, without the
veil : though not in prosperous health, she was daily absent in
the khala, from the forenoon till the rn id -afternoon ; and when
I asked her wherefore she wearied herself thus ? she said, and
sighed, " I must fetch water from the Sfii to-day, and to-morrow
visit the camels ; and else Maatuk beats me." Maatuk's hospi-
tality was more than any Beduwy had showed me : Noweyr gave
me to drink of her leban ; and he bade me reach up rny hand
when I was hungry to take of her new inereesy shards, which
were spread to dry in the sun upon their worsted roof. If the
camels came home he milked a great bowlful for the stranger,
saying, it was his sadaka, or meritorious human kindness, for
God's sake. In these evenings, I have seen the sporting goats
skip and stand, often two and three together, upon the camels'
steep chines : and the great beasts, that lay chawing the end in
the open moonlight, took no more heed of them than cattle in
our fields, when crows or starlings light upon them.

Maatuk was afraid to further me, because of Ibn Rashid : and
they told me a strange tale. A year or two ago, these Heteym
carried on their camels some strangers, whom they called
" Nasara " ! — I know not whither. The Emir hearing of it,
could hardly be entreated not to punish them cruelly, and take
their cattle. — " Ay, this is true, 0 Khalil ! " added Noweyr. —
"But what Nasranies! and from whence?" — " Wellah, they
could not tell, the strangers were Nasara, as they heard." The
Arabs are barren-minded in the emptiness of the desert life, and

122 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

retchless of all that pertains not to their living.' " Nasara,"
might signify in their mouths no more than " aliens not of the
orthodox belief." Maatuk: " Ibn Rashid is not thy friend, and
the country is dangerous ; abide with me, Khalil, till the Haj
come and return again, next spring." — " How might I live those
many months? is there food in the khala ? " — " You may keep
my camels." — "But how under the flaming sun, in the long
summer season ? " — " When it is hot thou canst sit in my booth,
and drink leban ; and I will give thee a wife " — Hearing his
words, I rejoiced, that the Aarab no longer looked upon me as
some rich stranger amongst them ! When he pronounced * wife/
the worthy man caught his breath ! — could he offer a bint of
Heteym to so white a man? so he said further, "I will give
thee an HarMa."

11 Years ago, quoth Maatuk, there came into our parts a
Moghreby [like Khalil], — wellah we told little by him ; but the
man bought and sold, and within a while we saw him thriving.
He lived with Harb, and took a wife of their daughters ; and the
Moor had flocks and camels, all gotten at the first and increased
of his traffic in samn and clothing. Now he is dead, his sons
dwell with Harb, and they are well-faring." We sat in the
tent, and they questioned me, ' Where is thy nation ? ' I shewed
them the setting sun, and said we might sail thither in our
shipping, sefn. — " Shipping (they said one to another) is zym&t ;
but 0 Khalil, it is there, in the West, we have heard to be the
Kafir Nation ! and that from thence the great danger shall come
upon el-Islam: beyond how many floods dwell ye, we heard seven ;
and how many thelul journeys- be ye behind the Sooltan ? " —
Coffee-drinking, though the Heteyman be welfaring more than
the neighbour Beduins, is hardly seen, even in sheykhs' tents,
amongst them : there was none in Maatuk's ferij Aarab of
Ibn Rashid, their only enemies are the Ateyba ; and pointing
to the eastward, " All the peril, said Maatuk, is from thence ! "
— These Heteym (unlike their kindred inhabiting nearer Medina)
are never cheesemakers..

He is a free man that may carry all his worldly possession
upon one of his shoulders : now I secretly cast away the super-
fluous weight of my books, ere a final effort to pass out of Arabia,
and (saving Die alte Geograpliie Arabiens, and Zehme's Arabien
seit hunderi Jahren) gave them honourable burial in a thob's
hole ; heaped in sand, and laid thereon a great stone. — In this
or another generation, some wallowing camel or the streaming
winter rain may discover to them that dark work of the Nasrany.
Six days the Nomad tents v> ere standing at Aul, to-morrow they

RKT OFT TO HM) NIX N \H \L

would dislodge ; and Man I nk no\\ •< , the stranger

to Ilni N:ili;il : tor \..W\T, lifting li«-r j.-.lo face above

WOman'fl iMirtain, nmny 1 hues daily e\ iiorfed !ii:

Maatuk ! detain not Khalil against his liking ; stranger

home.*1

Their raiin-ls were come; and when Ihe morning broke, 'Art
Mum ready, quoth J\Iaatuk, and I will hring the t&4 lul : but, in
faith 1 kno\v not where llm NYihal tnay bo found." Noweyr
put, a small skin of sanin in her husband's wallet; to be, she
said, for the stranger. We mounted, Maatuk's sly bn
brought us on our journey ; and hissed his last counsels in my
raiik's ear, winch were not certainly to the advantage of the
:— -"Aye! aye ! " quoth Mr-at.uk. We rode on a h in r,
or dromedary male (little used in these countries), and which
is somewhat rougher riding. By this the sun was an hour high ;
and we held over the desert toward the Sfa, mountain. A
two hours we saw another menzil of Heteyin, sheykh Iln
])<i,irnt ilk, and their camels pasturing in the plain. Maatuk called
the herdsman to us to tell and take the news; but they had
he;ird nothing lately of Ibn Nahal.

The waste beyond was nearly mithal: we rode by some
granite blocks, disposed bay wise, and the head laid south-east-
ward, as it were towards Mecca : it might be taken in these days
for a praying place. But Maatuk answered, " Such works are
of the ancients in these diras, — the B. Taamir." We saw a very
great thob's burrow, and my rafik alighted to know if the edible
monster were ' at home : ' and in that, singing cheerfully, he
startled a troop of gazelles. Maatuk shrilled through his teeth,
and the beautiful deer bounded easily before us ; then he yelled
like a wild man, and they bent themselves to their utmost flight.
The scudding gazelles stood still anon, in the hard desert plain
of gravel, and gazed back like timid damsels, to know what had
made them afraid. — In Syria, I have seen mares, " that had out-
stripped gazelles"; but whether this were spoken in the ordinary
figure of their Oriental speech, which we call a falsehood, 1 have
not ascertained. The nomads take the fawns with their grey-
hounds, which are so swift, that I have seen them overrun the
small desert hare almost in a moment. I asked Maatuk,
Where was his matchlock ? — He lost it, he answered, to a
ghrazzu of Ateyba — that was a year ago ; and now he rode
but with that short cutlass, wherewith his brother had once
threatened the Nasrany. He sang in their braying-wise [which
one of their ancient poets, Antara, compared to the hum of flies !J
as we passed over the desert at a trot, and quavering his voice
(i-i-14) to the wooden jolting of the thelul saddle. Maatuk

124 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

told me, (with a sheykh's pride), that those Beduin households
in his f erij had been with him several years. In the midsummer
time all the ferjan of the Ibn Barrak Heteym (under the sheykh
Kasim,) assemble and pitch together, near the Wady er-Rummah,
" where, said he, one may find water, under the sand, at the
depth of this camel stick." — Wide we Lave seen to be the
dispersion of the Heteym : there are some of the B. Rashid far
in the North, near Kuweyt !

Now before us appeared a steep granite mountain, Genna ;
and far upon our left hand lay the watering JBenana, between
mountains. We came after mid-day to a great troop of Heteym
camels : but here was the worst grazing ground (saviag the
Sinai country) that I ever beheld in the wilderness; for there
was nothing sprung besides a little wormwood. The herd boys
milked their nagas for us ; but that milk with the froth was like
wormwood for bitterness [and such is the goats' milk in this
pasture]. The weleds enquired in their headlong manner, " El-
Jchdbar ? weysh el-elltim ? What tidings from your parts, what
news is there?" — "Well, it may please Ullah." — "And such
and such Aarab, beyond and beside you, where be they now ?
where is such a sheykh encamped, and of what waters drink
they ? is there word of any ghrazzus ? And the country which
you have passed through ? — say is it bare and empty, or^Buch
that it may satisfy the cattle ? Which herbs saw ye in it, O
Maatuk ? What is beard of the Emir ? and where left ye your
households ? — auh ! and the ferjan and Aarab thou hast men-
tioned, what is reported of their pasture ?" — Maatuk: "And
what tidings have ye for us, which Aarab are behind you ?
what is heard of any ghrazzus ? Where is Ibn Nahal ? where be
your booths ? "

An hour or two later we found another herd of Heteym
camels : and only two children kept them ! Maatuk made a
gesture, stroking down his beard, when we rode from them ;
and said, " Thus we might have taken wellah every head of
them, had they been our enemies' cattle ! " Yet all this country
lies very open to the inroads of Ateyba, who are beyond the W.
er-Rummah. Not much later we came to a menzil of Heteym,
and alighted for that day. — These tent-dwellers knew me, and
said to Maatuk, ' I had journeyed with a tribesman of theirs,
Ghroceyb, my name was Khalil ; and Kasim's Aarab purchased
medicines of me, which they found to be such as I had foretold
them ; I was one that deceived not the Aarab.' As for Ibn
Nahal, they heard he was gone over "The Wady/' into the
Ateyba border, (forsaken by them of late years for dread of Ibn
Rashid). The land height was here 4200 feet, shelving to the
W. er-Rummah.

MKKT WITH TI1K ir.\mi. NBAB MY 125

At daybreak we mounted, and carae after an hour's ridin
other Ileteym tents. All the wilderness was barren, almost
mahal, and yet, full of the nomads' worsted hamlets at this
in. Maatnk found a half-brother in this menzil, with their
old mother ; and we alighted to sit awhile with them. Tin- man
brought fresh goat milk and bade me drink, — making- much of
it, because his hospil alii y was whole milk ; ' The sanm, he said,
had not been taken.' Batter is t he poor nomads' money, where-
with they may buy themselves clothing and town wares; th-
fore they use to pour out only buttermilk to the guest. — We
rode further; the (granite) desert was now sand soil, in which
after winter rain there springs the best wild pasture, and we
began to find good herbage. We espied a camel troop feeding
under the mountain Genna, and crossed to them to enquire
the herdsmen's tidings ; but Maatnk, who was timid, presently
drew bridle, not certainly knowing what they were. " Yonder,
I said, be only black camels, they are Harb ; " [the great cattle
of the south and middle tribes, Harb, Meteyr, Ateyban, are
commonly swarthy or black, and none of them dun-coloured].
Maatnk answered, it was God's truth, and wondered from
whence had I this lore of the desert. We rode thither and
found them to be Harb indeed. The young men told us that
Ibn Nahal had alighted by Seleymy to-day ; and they milked
for us. We rode from them, and saw the heads of the palms
of the desert village, and passed by a trap mountain, Chebtid.

Before us, over a sandy descending plain, appeared a flat
mountain Debby ; and far off behind Debby I saw the blue coast
of some wide mountain, el-Alem. " Thereby, said Maatuk, lies
the way to Medina, — four days' thelul riding." We went on in
the hot noon ; and saw another camel troop go feeding under
the jebel ; we rode to them and alighted to drink more milk
and enquire the herdsmen's tidings. They were Harb also, and
shewed us a rocky passage in the mountain to go over to Ibn
N£hal. But I heard of them an adverse tiding: 'The B. Aly
(that is all the Harb N. and E. from hence) were drawing south-
wards, and the country was left empty, before a ghrazzu of Ibn
Saud and the Ateyba ! ' — How now might I pass forward to el-
Kasim ? We saw a multitude of black booths pitched under
Debby; * They were Attf\ answered the herdsmen, — come up
hither from the perpetual desolation of their Hejaz marches, be-
tween the Harameyn ; for they heard that the rabia was in these
parts. — El-Attf ! that is, we have seen, a name abhorred even
among their brethren; for of Auf are the purse-cutters and
pillers of the poor pilgrims. And here, then, according to a dis-
tich of the western tribes, I was come to the ends of the (known)
world ! for says one of their thousand rhymed saws, ' El-Adf

126 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

warrahum ma ft shuf, nothing is seen beyond Auf:' I beheld
indeed a desert world of new and dreadful aspect ! black camels,
and uncouth hostile mountains ; and a vast sand wilderness
shelving towards the dire imposter's city !

Genna is a landmark of the Beduin herdsmen ; in the head
are pools of rain-water. Descending in the steep passage, we
encountered a gaunt desert man riding upward on a tall theliil
and leading a mare : he bore upon his shoulder the wavering
horseman's shelf a. Maatuk shrank timidly m the saddle ; that
witch-like armed man was a startling figure, and might be an
Aufy. Eoughly he challenged us, and the rocks resounded the
magnanimous utterance of his leathern gullet : he seemed a
manly soul who had fasted out his life in that place of torment
which is the Hejaz between the Harameyn, so that nothing re-
mained of him but the terrific voice ! — wonderfully stern and
beetle-browed was his dark visage. He espied a booty in my
bags ; and he beheld a stranger. " Tell me, he cries, what
men be ye ? " — Maatuk made answer meekly, " Heteymy I, and
thou ? " — " I Harby, and ugh ! cries the perilous anatomy, who
he with thee ? " — " A Shainy trading among the Aarab." — "Aye
well, and I see him to be a Sliamy, by the guise of his clothing,"
He drew his mare to him, and in that I laid hand to the pistol
in my bosom, lest this Death-on-a-horse should have lifted his
long spear against us. Maatuk reined aside ; but the Harby
struck his dromedary, and passed forth.

We looked down from the mountain over a valley-like plain,
and saw booths of the Aarab, V Khalil, quoth Maatuk, the
people is ignorant, I shall not say to any of them, ' He is a
Nasrany ' ; and say it not thyself. Wellah I may not go with
thee to Ibn Nahal's beyt, but will bring thee to Aarab that are
pitched by him." — " You shall carry me to Ibn Nahal himself.
Are not these tribesmen very strait in religion ? I would not
light at another tent ; and thou wilt not abandon thy rafik."
— " But Khalil there is an old controversy betwixt us for
camels ; and if I went thither he might seize this thelul." — " I
know well thou speakest falsely." — " Nay, by Him who created
this camel-stick ! " — But the nomad was forsworn ! The
Nejumies had said to me at Kheybar, " It is well that Khalil
never met with Harb ; they would certainly have cut his throat : "
— they spoke of Harb tribesmen between the sacred cities,
wretches black as slaves, that have no better trade than to run
behind the caravans clamouring, bakshish !

Here I came to upland Harb, and they are tributaries of Ibn
Rash id; but such distinctions cannot be enquired out in a
day from the ignorant. In the Nejd Harb I have found the

HARP, WOl

!-i:iM iniiitl, moiv 1 haii ii:

. ! at Kh.-yl»;ir JTM a yOUl

Mammons, of .111 M^cvt ical humour; he WM Seldom
Abdullah's rufV-'t1 d n't d-. in ;_••-, and y«-f lie came IB
Amm Mohammed, who was liis hal f'-l ri'uf-Mi'-n. : :
kindred. One dav lie said boa-ting, "We tin- \ '• i are

better than ye ; for we bavenothiog Kn-njy [of OUtla
or wares fetched in by Turks and foreign pilgrims to the Holy
Places], saving this tobacco." — No
or four 1 tooths, whicli stood a pa it in th" \ :: I !•<;;- pl.iin ; he alight- < I

re them, and said lie would leave me there.
woman came ooi t-> us, \,;<Te we sat on the sand beside the
yet unloaded tluMuI ; and tlu-n a youuir wilV IVom :
ivxt u-. Very cleanly-gay s! 1, anion^.-t Aa.'aU in her

new calico kirtle of l»lue broidcrcd \\itl;

not this tlie bridt>, in IHT ma.' rniiiMit, of sonif !>•• Sitin's

fortiiiiatt* youth ? She approached with tho ^-rruv of the d<
and, \vliicli is seldom seen., with some dewy freshness in her
checks, — it mi#ht be of an amiable modesty ; and she was a
lovely luini.-i-i flower in that inhuman desolation. Sh'-
with a yonng woman's ditlid^nce, 'What would we?' Maatuk
responded to the daughter of liarb, " Salaam, and if ye have
here any sick persons, this is an hakim from es-Sham ; one who
travels about with his medicines among the Aarab, and is very
well skilled , now he seeks who will convey him to el-Kusim.
1 leave this Simmy at your Ivyt, for I cannot myself carry
him further ; and ye will send him forward." She called the
elder woman to counsel; and they answered, * Look you! the
men are in the klmla. and we are women alone. It were better
that ye went over to Ibn Nahal ! — and see, that is his great booth
standing yonder ! '— Maatuk : " I will leave him here ; and
when they come home (at evening) your men can see to it."
But I in ado him mount with me to ride to Ibn Nahal.

We alighted at Ibn Nahal's great beyt : and entered with the
solemnity and greeting of strangers. Ibn Nihal'i son and a few
young men were sitting on the sand, in this wide hanging-room
of worsted. We sat down nnd they whispered among them,
that * I was some runaway soldier, of the Dowla' [from the Holy
Cities or el-Yemen]: then I heard them whisper, 'Nay, I was
that Nasrany ! ' — They would not question with us till we had
drunk kahwa.

A nomad woman of a grim stature stood upbraiding without
Ibn Nahal's great booth ! she prophesied bitter words in the air,
and no man regarded. Her burden was of the decay of hospi-
tality now-a-days! and Ibn Nahal [a lean soul, under a sleek

128 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

skin], was gone over to another tent to be out of 'earshot of the
wife-man's brawling. The Beduw commonly bear patiently the
human anger, zaal, as it were trouble sent by the will of God
upon them : the Aarab are light even in their ire, and there is
little weight in their vehement words If any Nomad tribesman
revile his sheykh, he as a nobleman, will but shrink the shoulders
and go further off, or abide till others cry down the injurious
mouth. But evil tongues, where the Arabs dwell in towns,
cannot so walk at their large : the common railer against the
sheukh in Hayil, or in Boreyda, would be beaten by the sergeants
of the Emir.

The coffee mortar rang out merrily for the guests in Ibn
Nahal's booth : and now I saw the great man and his coffee
companions approaching, with that (half feminine) wavering gait
which is of their long clothing and unmuscular bodies. They
were coffee lords, men of an elegant leisure in the desert life ;
also the Harb go gallantly clad amongst Beduins. Khalaf ibn
Nahal greeted us strangers with his easy smile, and the wary
franchise of these mejlis politicians, and that ringing hollow
throat of the dry desert ; he proffered a distant hand : we all sat
down to drink his kahwa, — and that was not very good. Khalaf
whispered to his son, " What is he, a soldier ? " The young man
smiling awaited that some other should speak : so one of the
young companions said, " We think we should know thee." The
son : " Art not thou the Nasrany that came last year to Hayil ? "
— " I am he." — " I was at Hayil shortly after, and heard of thee
there ; and when you entered, by the tokens, I knew thee."
Khalaf answered among them, unmoved, "He had visited the
Nasara, that time he traded with camels to Egypt ; and they
were men of a singular probity. Wellah, in his reckoning with
one of them, the Christian having received too much by five-
pence, rode half a day after him to make restitution ! " He
added, " Khalil travels among the Aarab ! — well, I say, why not ?
he carries about these medicines, and they (the Nasara) have good
remedies. Abu Faris before him, visited the Aarab ; and wellah
the princes at Hayil favoured this Khalil ? Only a thing mis-
likes me, which I saw in the manners of the Nasara, — Khalil,
it is not honest ! Why do the men and hareem sit so nigh, as
it were in the knees of each other ? "

Now there came in two young spokesmen of the Seleymy
villagers, — although they seemed Beduw. They complained of
the injury which Khalaf had done them to-day, sending his
camels to graze in their reserve of pasture ; and threatened
* that they would mount and ride to Hayil, to accuse him before
the Emir ! ' Khalaf 's son called them out presently to eat in

CAM. ANTS OF HAIM5

tin' inner apartment, made (snrh I !md imf Men i :i the

midst of this very l"ng and dm'ii t'-iil : that hidden

dish is not rightly of tin* Nrjd Aarab, hut savours of the town
life and Medina. The young men answered in their displeasure,
they were not hungry, they catno not hither to eat, and that
they were here at home. K/idlaf: "But go in and eat, and
afterward we will speak together?" They went unwillingly,
and returned anon: and when ho saw them a^rain, Khalaf,
because he did them wrong, began to scold : — " Do not they
of Seleymv receive many benefits from us? buy we not dates
of you and corn also? why are ye then ungrateful? — Ullah,
curso the fathers of them, fathers of settatdsher kelb (sixteen
dogs)." Another said : " Ullali, curse them, fathers of ethnasher
Mb (twelve dogs) ; " forms more liberal perhaps than the " sixty
doL,rs " of the vulgar malice. These were gallants of Ilarb,
bearing about, in their Beduin garments, the savour of Medina.
Khalaf said, with only a little remaining bitterness, that to
satisfy them, he would remove on the morrow. Seleymy (So-
leyma) is a small Shammar settlement of twelve households,
their wells are very deep.

When the young men were gone, Khalaf, taking again his
elated countenance gave an ear to our business. He led out
Maatuk and, threatening the timid Heteymy with the dis-
pleasure of Ibn Rashid, enquired of him of my passing in the
country, and of my coming to his menzil. I went to Khalaf,
and said to them, "Thou canst send me, as all the people say,
to el-Kasim : I alighted at your beyt, and have tasted of your
hospitality, and would repose this day and to-morrow ; and then
let some man of your trust accompany me, for his wages, to el-
Kasim." His voice was smooth, but Khalat's dry heart was full
of a politic dissimulation : " Mel uJcdar, I am not able ; and how,
he answered, might we send thee to el-Kuslni ? — who would
adventure thither ; the people of Aneyza are our enemies." —
" Khalaf, no put-offs, you can help me if you will." — "Well,
hearken ! become a Moslem, and I will send thee whithersoever
thou would'st ; say, ' There is no God, beside Ullah,' and I will
send thee to el-Kasim freely," — " You promise this, before
witnesses ? " — " Am I a man to belie my words." — " Hear then
all of you ; There is none God but Ullah ! — let the thelul be
brought round." — "Ay ! say also Mohammed is the messenger
of Ullah ! " — " That was not in our covenant ; the thelul Khalaf j
and let me be going." — " I knew not that the Nasranies could
say so ; all my meaning was that you should become a Moslem.
Khalil, you may find some of the jcmmamil (camaleers, sing.
>dl) of el-Kasim, that come about, at this season, to sell

VOL. n. I

130 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

clothing among the Aarab. Yesterday I heard of one of them
in these parts [it was false] ; a jemmal would carry thee back
with him for two reals. When you have supped and drunk the
evening camel milk, mount again with this Heteymy ! and he
will convey thee to him " ; — but I read in his looks, that it was
a fable. He went aside with Maatuk again, — was long talking
with him ; and required him, with words like threatenings, to
carry me from him. When we had supped, Maatuk called me
to mount. I said to Ibn Nahal, "If I am forsaken in thia
wilderness, or there should no man receive me, and I return
to thee, wilt thou then receive me ? "— Khalaf answered, 'he
would receive me.'

In the first darkness of the night we rode from him ; seek-
ing a ferij which Maatuk had espied as we came down from
Genna. After an hour, Maatuk said, " Here is sand, shall we
alight and sleep ? " — for yet we saw not their watcbfires — " Let
us ride on : and if all fail tell me what shall become of me, my
rafik?"— " Khalil, I have said it already, that I will carry thee
again to live with me in my ferij." Then a hound barked from
the dark valley side : we turned up thither, and came before
three tents ; where a camel troop lay chawing the cud in the
night's peace : their fires were out, and the Aarab were already
sleeping. We alighted and set down our bags, and kneebouud
the thelul. I would now have advanced to the booths, but
Maatuk withheld me, — " It were not well, he whispered ; but
abide we here, and give them time, and see if there come not
some to call us."

Bye and bye a man approached, and " Ugh ! said he, as he
heard our salaam, why come ye not into the beyt ? " This
worthy bore in his hand a spear, and a huge scimitar in the
other. We found the host within, who sat up blowing the
embers in the hearth ; and laid on fuel to give us light. He
roused the housewife ; and she reached us over the curtain a
bowl of old rotten leban, of which they make sour mereesy.
We sipped their sorry night bever, and all should now be peace
and confidence ; yet he of the spear and scimitar sat on, holding
his weapons in his two hands, and lowered upon us. " How now,
friend ! I said at last, is this that thou takest us for robbers, I
and my rafik ? " — " Ugh ! a man cannot stand too much upon
his guard, there is ever peril." Maatuk said merrily, " He has
a sword and we have another ! " The host answered smiling,
" He never quits that huge sword of his and the spear, waking
or sleeping ! " So we perceived that the poor fellow was a
knight of the moonshine. I said to our host, "I am a hakim
from Damascus, and I go to el-Kasim : my rafik leaves me

THK HOST, MOTLOG 1-°.1

here, rind will you send in.- t'nilli.-r for my moii'-y, four real
He answered gently, " W® w^ see to-inorrow, find I think W6
may a-jree together, whether I m y thee, or I

find another; in tin- meantime, .stay wit li in a, day or t'

\Yhen wo would • housemother, the of tin- n.i.h-n ir-i,.-m,

:\ tiling tn on*- of us, \\hich made me think wo were not
wdl ;inived : she was a forsaken wif'o of our host's In-other. I
asked Maatuk, " If such were the Harb manners !" — He whis-
p- r.-d again, "As thou seest ; and Bay, Khalil, shall I leave thee
aero, or wilt thon return with me ? " •— When the day broke,
Maatuk said to them, "I leave him with you, take care of him :''
so he mounted and rodo from us.

Moth(j (that was our host's name): "Let us walk down to
Il)ii iSYthal, and take counsel how we may send thee to el-K,
but I have a chapped heel and may hardly go." I dressed the
wound with ointment and gave him a sock ; and the Beduwy
drew o)i a pair of old boots that he had bought in Medina. We
had gone half a mile, when I saw a horseman, with his long
lance, riding against us : a fierce-looking fanatical fellow. — It
was he who alone, of all who sat at Khalai's, had contraried me
yesterday. This horseman was Tollog, my host's elder brother !
and it was his booth wherein we had passed the night ! his was
also that honest forsaken housewife ! It were a jest worthy of
the Arabs and their religion, to tell why the new wedded man
chose to lie abroad at Ibn Nahal's.

" IIow now ! " cries our horseman staring upon me like a man
ngliast. His brother responded simply of the Shamy hakim and
the Hcteymy, — " Akhs ! which way went that Heteymy ? " (and
balancing his long lance, he sat up) I will gallop after him and
bring him again, — Ullah curse his father ! and knowest thou
that this is a Nasrany?" Motlog stood a moment astonished !
then the poor man said nobly, " Wa low, and though it be
so . . . ? he is our guest and a stranger ; and that Heteymy is
now too far gone to be overtaken." — Tollog rode further ; he
was a shrew at home and ungracious, but Motlog was a mild
man We passed by some spring pasture, and Motlog cried to
a child, who was keeping their sheep not far off, to run home
und tell them to remove hither. When the boy was gone a
furlong he waved him back and shouted ' No ! ' for he had
changed his mind : he was a little broken headed, — and so is
every third man in the desert life. I saw, where we passed
under a granite headland, some ground courses of a dry-built
round chamber such as those which, in the western diras, I have
supposed to be sepulchres.

132 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

Khalaf had removed since yesterday : we found him in his
tent stretched upon the sand to slumber — it was noon. The
rest made it strange to see me again, but Motlog my host
worthily defended me in all. Khalaf turning himself after a
while and rising, for the fox was awake, said with easy looks,
" Aha ! this is Khalil back again ; and how Khalil, that cursed
Heteymy forsook thee ? " When he heard that Maatuk had
taken wages of me he added : " Had I known this, I would have
cut off his head, and seized his thelul ; — ho ! there, prepare the
midday kahwa." His son answered, " We have made it already
and drunk round." — "Then make it again, and spare not for
kahwa." Khalaf twenty days before had espoused a daughter
of the village, and paid the bride money; and the Beduins
whispered in mirth, that she was yet a maid. For this his
heart was in bale : and the son, taking occasion to mock the
Heteymy, sought in covert words his father's relief, from one
called an hakim. Ibn Nahal said at last kindly, " Since Khalil
has been left at your beyt, send him Motlog whither he desires
of thee." * * *

* * * There was here but the deadly semblance of hospitality;
naught but buttermilk, and not so much as the quantity of a
cup was set before me in the long day. Happy was I when each
other evening their camels came home, and a short draught wag
brought me of the warm leban. Tollog, the gay horseman, was
a glozing fanatical fellow ; in Motlog was some drivelling nobility
of mind: the guest's mortal torment was here the miserable
hand of Tollog's cast wife. Little of God's peace or blessing was
in this wandering hamlet of three brethren ; the jarring con-
tention of their voices lasted from the day rising, till the stars
shone above us. Though now their milk-skins overflowed with
the spring milk, they were in the hands of the hareem, who
boiled all to mereesy, to sell it later at Medina. The Beduw of
high Nejd would contemn this ignoble traffic, and the decay of
hospitality.

Being without nourishment I fell into a day-long languishing
trance. One morrow I saw a ferij newly pitched upon the
valley side, in face of us: when none observed me, I went
thither under colour of selling medicines: Few men sat at
home, and they questioned with me for my name of Nasrany ;
the women clamoured to know the kinds of my simples, but
none poured me out a little leban. I left them and thought I
saw other tents pitched beyond : when I had gone a mile, they
were but a row of bushes. Though out of sight of friends and

A FUGITIVE OF MKTKVIl

rmecl, I went on. Imping to espy some booths of th
1 descried a Mark spot, moving far off on the rising plain, and
thought it inifjlit. be an herd of gnats. I would go to them and
drink milk. I crossed to the thin shadow of an acacia tree;
for the sunlieaten soil burned my bare soles; and tnrnii I
•i t:dl JJedjiwy issue from a broken ground and go by, upon
his stalking dromedary; he had not perceived the stranger:
tl it>n I made forward a mile or two, to come to the goats. I
found but a young woman with a child herding them. —
'frilttuni ! and could she tell me where certain of the people
were pitched, of such a name?' She answered a little
affrighted, • She knew them not, they were not of her Aarab.'
— "() maiden milk for me!" — " Min fen Jialib, milk from
whence? we milked them early at the booths; there is naught
now in these goats' udders, and we have no vessel to draw in : "
she said her tents stood yet far beyond. "And is there not
luM-eby a ferij, for which I go seeking all this morrow?" —
" Come a little upon the hill side, and I will shew it thee : lo
there! thou mayest see their beyts." My eyes were not so
good ; but I marked where she shewed with her finger and
went forward. Having marched half an hour, over wild and
broken ground, I first saw the menzil, when I was nigh upon
i hem ; and turned to go t^^ greater booth in the circuit, wherein
J espied men sitting.

Their hounds leapt out against me with open throat; the
householder ran with an hatchet, to chase them away from
the stranger (a guest) arriving. — As I sat amongst them, I
perceived that these were not the Beduins I sought. I asked
bye and bye, "Have ye any t£mr?" — also to eat with them
would be for my security. The good man answered cheer-
fully, " We have nothing but cheese ; and that shall be fetched
immediately." The host was a stranger, a fugitive of Meteyr,
living with these Harb, for an homicide. He sat bruising green
bark of the boughs of certain desert trees ; and of the bast he
would twist well-ropes : " There are, said he, some very (ghra-
mik, for 'amtk) deep golbdn (sing, jclltb, a well) in these diras."
The poor people treated me honourably, asking mildly and
answering questions. I said, " I came to seek who would carry
me to el-Kasim for his wages." The man answered, " He had
a good thelul ; and could I pay five reals, he would cany me,
and set me down wellah in the market-place of Aneyza ! "

When I came again to my hosts — " Whither wentest thou ?
exclaimed Motlog ; to go so far from our tents is a great danger
for thee; there are many who finding thee alone would kill

134 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

thee, the Beduw are kafirs, Khalil." When I told him the
man's name, who would carry me to Aneyza, he added, *' Have
nothing to do with him ! he is a Meteyry If he rode with
thee (radif), beware of his knife — a Meteyry cannot keep himself
from treachery ; or else he might kill thee sleeping : now canst
thou ride four days to el-Kasim without sleeping ! " Such evil-
speaking is common between neighbour tribes ; but I think the
Meteyry would have honestly conveyed me to Aneyza. Motlog
had in certain things the gentlest mind of any Arab of my
acquaintance hitherto. When he saw that by moments, I fell
asleep, as I sat, even in the flaming sun, and that I wandered
from the (inhospitable) booths — it was but to seek some rock's
shelter where, in this lethal somnolence and slowness of spirit,
I might close the eyes — he said, ' He perceived that my breast
was straitened (with grief) here among them : ' and since I had
taken this journey to heart, and he could not carry me himself
so far as Boreyda, he would seek for someone to-day to convey
me thither; — howbeit that for my sake, he had let pass the
ghrazzu of Ibn Nahal, — for which he had obtained the loan of
another horse.

Besides him. a grim councillor for my health was Aly, he of
the spear and scimitar : that untempered iron blade had been
perchance the pompous side arm of some javelin man of the great
officers of Medina, — a personage in the city bestowed the warlike
toy upon the poor soul, "Ana sorJiibak, I am thy very friend,"
quoth Aly, in the husk voice of long-suffering misery. He was
of the Harb el- Aly : they are next from hence in the N.-E and
not of these Aarab. I asked him • " Where leftest thou thy
wife and thy children and thy camels ? " He answered, " I
have naught besides this mantle and iny tunic arid my weapons :
ana yatim I I am an orphan ! " This fifty years' old poor
Beduin soul was yet in his nonage ; — what an -hell were it of
hunger and misery, to live over his age again ! He had inherited
a possession of palms, with his brother, at Medina; but the
stronger father's son put out his weak-headed brother : and, said
Motlog, " The poor man (reckoned a fool) could have there no
redress." — "And why are these weapons always in his hands?"
— " He is afraid for a thing that happened years ago : Aly and
a friend of his, rising from supper, said they would try a fall.
They wrestled : Aly cast the other, and fell on him , — and it may
be there had somewhat burst in him, for the fallen man lay
dead ! None accused Aly ; nevertheless the mesquin fled for his
life, and he has gone ever since thus armed, lest the kindred of
the deceased finding him should kill him."

At evening there sat with us a young kinsman of Tollog's new

TOLLorrs UIMDI-: [85

\vift\ IIi» was from another f'-iij ; ;m<l having spoken many in-
jurios of the Nasara, h<> said furthw, "Thou Tollog, and Motlog!
\vrllah, ye do not well to receive a kafir in your beyts;" and
taking for himself all th«» inner place at the fire, — unlike the
gentle customs of the l>rduins, he had quilo thrust out the guest
and th«« stranger into the evening wind ; for here WM bat a niche
made \viili a lap of the tent cloth, to serve, like the rest of 1
inhospitality, for the men'fl sitting-place. I exclaimed, "This
must l)t» an Ageyly ! "-— They answered, " Ay, he is an Ageyly !
a proud fellow, Khalil." — "I have found them hounds, Turks
and traitors ; by my faith, I have seen of them the vilest of man-
kind."—" Wellah, Khalil, it is true."—" What Harby is he?"
— "He is Hdzimy" — "An // then good friends, this

ignoble proud fellow is a Solubby ! " — " It is sooth, Khalil, aha-
ha-ha ! " and they laughed apace. The discomfited young man,
wh.'ii he found his tongue, could but answer, subbak, "The Lord
rebuke thee." It seemed to them a marvellous thing that I
should know this homely matter. — Hazim, an ancient fendy of
JIarb, are snibbed as Heteym ; and Beduins in their anger will
cast against any Heteymy, Sherary or sany the reproach of
Solubby. Eoom was now made, and this laughter had recon-
ciled the rest to the Nasrany. — I had wondered to see great part
of Tollog's tent shut close : but on the morrow, when the old
ribald housewife and mother of his children sat without boiling
sarnn, there issued from the close booth a new face, — a fair young
woman, clean and comely clad ! She was Tollog's (new) bright
bird in bridal bower; and these were her love-days, without
household charge. She came forth with dazing eyes in the
burning sunlight.

When the next sun rose, I saw that our three tents were be-
come four. These new comers were Seyadin, not Solubbies, not
sanies but (as we have seen) packmen of poor Beduin kin, carry-
ing wares upon asses among the Aarab. I went to visit the
strangers; — "Salaam!" — "Aleykom es-salaam ; and come in
Khalil ! art thou here ? "— " And who be ye ! "— " Rememberest
thou not when thou earnest with the Heteymies and drank coffee
in our kasr, at Gofar ? " The poor woman added, " And I
mended thy rent mantle." " Khalil, said the man, where is thy
galliun? I will fill it with hameydy." Bednin-born, ah the
paths of the desert were known to him ; he had peddled as far
as Kasim and he answered me truly in all that I enquired of
him : — they are not unkind to whom the world is unkind ! there
was no spice in them of fanaticism.

CHAPTER VII

JOURNEY TO EL-KASlM : BOREYDA

THE same morning came two Beduins with camel-loads of
temmn ; which the men had brought down for Tollog and Mot-
log, from el-Irak ! They were of Shammar and carriers in Ibn
Rashid's Haj caravan. I wondered how after long journeying
they had found our booths : they told me, that since passing
Hayil they had enquired us out, in this sort, — i Where is Ibn
Nahal ? ' — Answer : c We heard of him in the S.-E. country. —
Some say he is gone over to the Ateyba marches. — When last
we had word of him, he was in such part. — He went lately to-
wards Seleyma. — You shall find his Aarab between snch and
such landmarks. — He is grazing about Genna.' Whilst they
were unloading, a Beduin stranger, but known in this ferij,
arrived upon his camel after an absence : he had lately ridden
westward 130 miles, to visit Bishr, amongst whom he had been
bred up ; but now he dwelt with Harb. The man was of Sham-
mar, and had a forsaken wife living as a widow in our menzil :
he came to visit their little son Motlog counselled me to en-
gage this honest man for the journey to Kasim, We called him:
— He answered, * Wellah, he feared to pass so open a country,
where he might lose his camel to some foraying Ateyban ; ' but
Motlog persuaded him, saying he could buy with his wages a load
of dates (so cheap in el-Kasim) to bring home to his household.
He proffered to carry me to el-Buklceriek : but we agreed for five
reals that he should carry me to Boreyda. " Mount, drJcub ! "
quoth the man, whose name was H&med ; he loaded my things,
and climbed behind me, — and we rode forth. " Ullah bring
thee to thy journey's end ! said Tollog ; Ullah, give that you see
not the evil ! "

The sun was three hours high : we passed over a basalt coast,
and descended to another ferij , in which was Hamed's beyt.
There he took his water-skin, and a few handfuls of mereesy —
all his provision for riding other 450 miles — and to his house-

KL i:{7

ln« said INI more tli;m i his : u Woman, I go wit li I In- si ranger
t«» li.Mvyda." She Obeyed tilently J :md commonly a llednv
departing lii«ls imt liis wife farewell: — "Hearett thou?
Hamed sigjiin) follow with these Aarab until my corning lion
Thi'ii he took their little son in his arms and kissed him. — We
rode at first northward for dread of .Ateyl.an : tins wilderness
is granite grit with many black basalt bergs. The marche
yond were now full of dispersed A.'irab, 15. Salem ; we saw their
black booths upon every side. All these .Harb were gathering
towards tfrniirn, in the Shammar dira, to be taxed there, upon a
day appointed, by the collectors of Ibn Uashid ; because there is
much water for their mult itude of cattle. We left the mountain
landmark of Hern'my at half a day's distance, west; and held
forward evenly with the course of W. er-Icummah, — the great
valley now lying at a few miles' distance upon the right hand.
Some Mark basaltic mountains, not very far oft', I famed told me,
were lu-ynml the Wady : that groat dry waterway bounds the
dirat of Harb in Nejd ; all beyond is Ateyba country. Twice as
we rode we met with camel herds; the men milked for us, and
we enquired and told tidings. At sun-setting we were journey-
ing under a steep basalt jebel ; and saw a black spot, upon a
mountain sand-drift, far before us, which was a booth of the
nomads : then we saw their camels, and the thought of evening
milk was pleasant to our hearts. " But seest thou ? said Hamed,
they are all males ! for they are gaunt and have low humps ; —
that is because they serve for carriage : the Aarab let the cows
fatten, and load not upon them." * * *

(Doughty passes with Hamed through the desert to Semira,
meeting with Beny Aly and Harb Aarab.)

* * * Now before us lay the Nefud sand of Kasim, which
begins to be driven-up in long swelling waves, that trend some-
what N. and S. Four miles further we went by the oasis
Ayttn ; embayed in the same sandstone train, which is before
called Sara. Upon a cliff by the Nefud side is a clay-built
lighthouse like watch-tower [the watch-tower is found in all the

138 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

villages of Kasim]. The watchman (who must be' clear sighted)
is paid by a common contribution : his duty is to look forth, in
the spring months, from the day rising till the going down of
the sun ; for this is the season, when the villagers who have
called in their few milch goats from the Aarab, send them
forth to pasture without the oasis. We saw the man stand-
ing unquietly in his gallery, at the tower head, in the flame of
the sun ; and turning himself to every part, he watched, under
the shadow of his hand, all the fiery waste of sand before
him. Hamed said, the palms at Ayun are about half the
palms of Teyma ; and here might be 400 or 500 inhabitants.
Ayun stands at the crossing of the Kasim cameleers' paths,
to J'. Shammar, to the land of the north, and to the Holy Cities.
My rafik had been well content to leave me here ; where, he
promised, I should meet with carriers to all parts, even to
Kuweyt and Bosra, " wellah, more than in Boreyda."

Some great cattle were feeding before us in the Nefud — they
were not camels ; but, oh ! happy homely sight, the villagers kine
at pasture in that uncheerful sand wilderness ! I said, " I
would ride to them and seek a draught of cow-milk." Hamed
answered. " Thou wilt ask it in vain, go not Khalil ! for these
are not like the Beduw, but people of the g6riat not knowing
hospitality : before us lies a good village, we shall soon see the
watch-tower, and we will alight there to breakfast." I saw a
distant clay steeple, over the Nefud southward. Hamed could
not tell the name of that oasis : he said, " Wellah the geraieh
(towns and villages) be so many in el-Kasim ! " We came in
two hours to Gassa, a palm village, with walls, and the greatest
grown palms that I had seen since Teyma, — and this said Hamed,
who knew Teyma. When I asked, what were the name Gassa,
he answered, " There is a pumpkin so called : " but the Beduw
are rude etymologers. Their watch-tower — mergdb or garra —
is founded upon a rock above the village. The base is of rude
stones laid in clay, the upper work is well built of clay bricks.
We were now in Kasim, the populous (and religious) nefud
country of the caravaners. We did not enter the place, but
halted at a solitary orchard house under the garra. It was the
time of their barley harvest : this day was near the last in April.
The land-height I found to be now only 2800 feet.

We dismounted ; the householder came out of his yard, to lead
us to the kahwa, and a child bore in my bags : Hamed brought
away the head-stall and halter of our camel, for here, he said,
was little assurance. The coffee-hall floor was deep Nefud sand !
When we had drunk two cups, the host called us into his store
room ; where he set before us a platter of dates — none of the

TIIIC NKFUD OF !

b, and • bowl of water. The penpir oi ,vera

of hosj)il;ilil y : tin1 p->or A?irab (that ,'iiv pafltei

purses) s;iv de-pitefuily, ' Ti LothiDg there but for thy

penny!' — this is true. Kasim resembles the }/'>rdei- lands and
the inhabitants are become as townsmen: their deep
mimtry, in the midst of high Arabia, is hardly less settled ;
Syria. 'Jlie Kusmfm are prudent and advent urous : there
tliem much of the thick B. Temim blood. Almost a third of Un-
people are caravancrs, to foreign ])rovinces, to Medina and
Mecca, to Kuvveyt, Bosra, Bagdad, to the W ah a" by country, to J.
Shammar. And many of them leave home in their youth to seek
fortune abroad ; where some (we have seen) serve the Otto1

••i nment in arms: they were till lately the Ageyl at I
Pamascus, and M"din:i. — All Nejd Arabia, east of Teyma,
appertains to the Persian Gulf traffic, and not to Syria: and
therefore the (foreign) colour of Nejd is Mesopotamian ! In those
borderlands are most of the emigrated from el-Kasim, — husband-
men and small salesmen ; and a few of them are become wealthy
merchants.

Arabians of other provinces viewing the many green villages
of this country in their winding-sheet of sand, are wont to say
half scornfully, ' Kaslin is all Nefud.' The Nefud of Kasim is
a sand country through whose midst passes the great Wady [er-
Rummah], and everywhere the ground water is nigh at hand.
Wells have been digged and palms planted in low grounds
[ga, or khobra], with a loam soil not too brackish or bitter :
and such is every oasis-village of el-Kasim. The chief towns
are of the later middle age. The old Kasim settlements, of
which the early Mohammedan geographers make mention, are
now, so far as I have enquired, ruined sites and names out of
mind. The poor of Kasim and el- Weslim wander even in their
own country ; young field labourers seek service from town to
town, where they hear that el-urruk, the sweat of their brow, is
likely to be well paid. Were el-Kasim laid waste, this sand
country would be, like the lands beyond Jordan, a wilderness
full of poor village ruins.

Our host sat with a friend, and had sparred his yard door
against any intrusion of loitering persons. These substantial
men of Kasim, wore the large silken Bagdad kerchief, cast
negligently over the head and shoulders ; and under this head-
gear the red Turkey cap, tarbush. Our host asked me what
countryman I was " I am a traveller, from Damascus." — " No,
thou art not a Shamy, thy speech is better than so ; for I have
been in Syria : tell me, art thou not from some of those vil-
lages in the Hauran ? I was there with the Ageyl. What art

140 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

thou ? thou art not of the Moslem in ; art thou then Yahudy,
or of the Nasara? " — " Yes, host, a Mesihy ; will ye therefore
drive me away, and kill me ? " — " No ! and fear nothing ; is not
this el-Kasim? where the most part have travelled in foreign
lands : they who have seen the world are not like the ignorant,
they will treat thee civilly." — We heard from him that Ibn
Saud was come as far as Mejmad : but those rumours had been
false of his riding in Kasim, and in the Harb country ! Our
host desired to buy quinine of the hakim ; I asked half a real ;
he would pay but fourpence, and put me in mind of his in-
hospitable hospitality. — " Wilt thou then accompany me to
Boreyda ? and I will give it thee." — " Wherefore should I pay
for k'anakina ? in Ka^irn thou wilt see it given away (by some
charitable merchants)."

— We rode over a salt-crusted bottom beyond the village :
the well-water at Gassa has a taste of this mineral. In the
oasis, which is greater than er-Rauth, may be three hundred
souls. The dark weather was past, the sun shone out in the
afternoon ; and I felt as we journeyed here in the desert of
el-Kasim, such a stagnant sultry air, as we may commonly find
in the deep Jordan plain below Jericho. At our left hand is
still the low sandstone coast; whereunder I could see palms
and watch-towers of distant hamlets and villages. The soil
is grit-sand with reefs of sand-rock ; beside our path are
dunes of deep Nefud sand. After five miles, we came before
Shukkuk, which is not far from Boreyda; it stands (as I
have not seen another Arabian settlement) without walls ! in
the desert side. Here we drew bridle to enquire tidings, and
drink of their sweet water. We heard that ffdsan, Emir of
Boreyda, whom they commonly call Weled (child of) Mahanna,
was with his armed band in the wilderness, ghrazzai. —
Mahanna, a mchjemmdl or camel master at Boreyda, lent money
at usury, till half the town were his debtors ; and finally
with the support of the Wahaby, he usurped the Emir's
dignity ! — Hamed told me yet more strangely, that the sheykh
of a g^ria, Kdfer, near Kuseyby, in these parts, is a sany !
he said the man's wealth had procured him the village
sheykhship. [It is perhaps no free oasis, but under Boreyda or
Hayil.]

Now I saw the greater dunes of the Nefud ; such are called
tdus and nef'd (pi. an fad) by Bed urns : and adandt and TcetM'b
(pi. kethbdn) are words heard in Kasim. "Not far beyond
the dunes on our right hand (towards Aneyza) lies the W.
er-Rummah," said Hamed. We journeyed an hour and a
half, and came upon a brow of tlae Nefud, as the sun was

VIK\V OF noRKYDA HI

going down. And 1'rom hence ftppeAft n-lik«- -p'-rtacle !

clay town built in this waste sand with enc!
walls and towers and streets and houses! and there b»-
a Miiish dark wood of ethel trees, upon hi^'h dunes! This is
I'>..reyda! and tliat square minaret, in tlie town, is of tln-ir

! mesjid. 1 saw, as it were, Jerusalem in tin* <!••
[a we look down from the Mount of Olives]. The last upshot
sim-beums enlighti'iied the dim clay city in glorious manner,
and pierced into that dull pa^vant of tamarisk trees. I asked
my rat'ik, " Wliere are their palms ? " He answered, "Not in
this part, they lie behind yonder great dune towards the Wady
(.•r-Kuimnah)."

Ift'unt'il : "And whilst we were in the way, if at anytime
I have displeased thee, forgive it me ; and say hast thou
found me a good rafik ? Klialil, thou seest Boreyda ! and
to-day I am to leave thee in this place. And when thou art in
any of th.-ir villages, say not, 'I (am) a Nasrany,' for then th>-y
will utterly hate thee ; but pray as they, so long as thou shalt
sojourn in the country, and in nothing let it be seen that
thou art not of the Moslemin : do thus, that they may bear thee
also goodwill, and further thee. Look not to find these town-
lings mild-hearted like the Beduw ! but conform thyself to
them ; or they will not suffer thee to abide long time among
them. I do counsel thee for the best — I may not compel thee !
pay thou art a mudowwy, and tell them what remedies thou
hast, and for which diseases : this also must be thine art to
live by. Thou hast suffered for this name of Nasrany, and
what has that profited thee ? only say now, if thou canst, * I
(am a) Musshm.' "

We met with some persons of the town, without their walls,
taking the evening air ; and as we went by they questioned my
Beduwy rafik : among them I noted a sinister Galla swordsman
of the Emir. Hamed answered, * We were going to the Emir's
hostel.' They said, " It is far, and the sun is now set ; were
it not better for you to alight at such an house ? that stands a
little within the gate, and lodge there this night ; and you may
go to the Emir in the morning." We rode from them and
passed the town gate : their clay wall [vulg. ajjidAt] is new, and
not two feet thick. We found no man in the glooming streets ;
the people were gone home to sup, and the shops in the suk
were shut for the night : their town houses of (sandy) clay are
low-built and crumbling. The camel paced under us with
shuffling steps in the silent and forsaken ways : we went by
the unpaved public place, mejlis ; which I saw worn hollow by

142 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

the townspeople's feet ! and there is the great clay mesjid and
high-built minaret. Hamed drew bridle at the yard of the
Emir's hostel, Mundkh es-SheuJch.

The porter bore back the rude gates; and we rode in and
dismounted. The journey from er-Kauth had been nearly
twenty-five miles. It was not long, before a kitchen lad bade
us, " rise and say God's name ". He led through dim cloistered
courts ; from whence we mounted by great clay stairs, to supper.
The degrees were worn down in the midst, to a gutter, and we
stumbled dangerously in the gloom. We passed by a gallery
and terraces above, which put me in mind of our convent
buildings : the boy brought us on without light to the end of a
colonnade, where we felt a ruinous floor under us. And there
he fetched our supper, a churlish wheaten mess, boiled in water
(a sort of Arabian btirghrol), without samn : we were guests of
the peasant Emir of Boreyda. It is the evening meal in Kasim,
but should be prepared with a little milk and butter; in good
houses this burghrol, cooked in the broth and commonly mixed
with temmn, is served with boiled mutton. — When we had eaten
and washed, we must feel the way back in the dark, in danger
of breaking onr necks, which were more than the supper's
worth. — And now Hamed bade me his short Beduin adieux : he
mounted his camel ; and I was easy to see my rafik safely past
the (tyrant's) gates. The moon was rising ; he would ride out
of the town, and lodge in one of the villages.

I asked now to visit " the Emir ", — Hasan's brother, whom
he had left deputy in Boreyda ; it was answered, " The hour is
late, and the Emir is in another part of the town ; — el-bdkir !
in the morning." The porter, the coffee server, a swordsman,
and other servitors of the guest-house gathered about me : the
yard gates were shut, and they would not suffer me to go forth.
Whilst I sat upon a clay bench, in the little moonlight, I was
startled from my weariness by the abhorred voice of their
barbaric religion ! the muethin crying from the minaret to the
latter prayer. — ' Ah ! I mused, my little provident memory ! what
a mischance ! why had I sat on thus late, and no Emir, and none
here to deliver me, till the morning ? ' I asked quickly, ' Where
was the sleeping place ? ' Those hyenas responded, with a sort
of smothered derision, ' Would I not pray along with them, ere
I went to rest ? ' — They shoved me to a room in the dark hostel
building, which had been used for a small kahwa

All was silent within and sounding as a chapel I groped,
and felt clay pillars, and trod on ashes of a hearth : and lay
down there upon the hard earthen floor. My pistol was in the

Till-: N 113

bottom of my IKI-X, which tin- pnrt»-i- i -«1 in, in another

plnee : 1 i'mmd my pen-knit'.-, ;iml fhoii-lit in my lu-art, they
should not go away with wh any would do me a

mi-chief; yet I Imped l! quietly. I had

not shnnb.'H'il an hour when I heard footsteps, of some one
iVling through the floor; "Tip, said a voice, and follow me,
Ihoii art ralb-d l>el\>n» the slieykhs to the coffee hall : " — he went
before, and I followed by the sound ; and found p»-
at coffee, who seemed to be of the Emir's guard. They i
me be sealed, nnd oi> 1 me a cup: then they questioned

me, " Art not thou the Nasrany that was lately at Hayil ? thou

there \\ith some of Anne/y ; and Aneybar sent thee away
upon 111- '"i (mangy thelfil) : they were to convey thee

to I ?"— "I am he."— " Why then didst thou not go

to K!i.-\bar?" — "You have said it, — because the thelul
jurraba ; those Bednins could not carry me thither, which
Anevbar well knew, but the slave would not hear: — tell me,

knowest thou this ? " — " I was in Hayil, and I saw thee
there. Did not Aneybar forbid thy going to Kaslm ? " — " I
heard his false words', that ye were enemies, his forbidding I
did not hear ; how could the slave forbid me to travel beyond the
borders of Ibn Kashid ? " — At this they laughed and tossed their
shallow heads, and I saw some of their teeth, — a good sign!
The inquisitors added, with their impatient tyranny, " What are
the papers with thee, ha ! go and fetch them ; for those will we
have instantly, and carry them to the Emir, — and (to a lad) go
thou with the Nasrany."

The porter unlocked a store-closet where my bags lay. I
drew out the box of medicines ; but my weary hands seemed
slow to the bird-witted wretches that had followed me. The
worst of them, a Kahtany, struck me with his fist, and reviled
and threatened the Nasrany. " Out, they cried, with all thy
papers!" and snatched them from my hands: "We go with
these, they said now, to the Emir." They passed out ; the gates
were shut after them : and I was left alone in the court. The
scelerat remained who had struck me : he came to me presently
with his hand on his sword, and murmured, "Thou kafir! say
La ilaliiW Ullali ; " and there came another and another. I sat
upon the clay bench in the moonlight, and answered them, "To-
morrow I will hear yon ; and not now, for I am most weary."

Then they plucked at my breast (for money) ! I rose, and
they all swarmed about me. — The porter had said a word in
my ear, " If thou hast any silver commit it to me, for these will
rob thee : " but now I saw he was one of them himself ! All

144 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

the miscreants being upon me, I thought I might exclaim,
JTaramteh, thieves ! ho ! honest neighbours ! " and see what
came of it ; but the hour was late, and this part of the town
solitary. — None answered to my voice, and if any heard me,
doubtless their hearts would shrink within them ; for the Arabs
[inhabiting a country weakly governed and full of alarms]
are commonly dastards. When I cried thieves ! I saw my tor-
mentors stand a little aghast : " Shout not (they said hoarsely)
or by Ullah — ! " So I understood that this assailing me was of
their own ribald malice, and shouted on ; and when I began to
move my arms, they were such cowards that, though I was
infirm, I might, I perceived, with a short effort have delivered
myself from them : yet this had been worse — for tben they would
return with weapons; and I was enclosed by walls, and could
not escape out of the town. Six were the vile crew struggling
with me : I thought it best to shout on haramieh ! and make
ever some little resistance, to delay the time. I hoped every
moment that the officer would return from the Emir. Now my
light purse was in their brutish hands ; and that which most
troubled me, the aneroid barometer, — it seemed to them a
watch in the starlight ! The Kahtany snatched and burst the
cord by which the delicate instrument was suspended from my
neck ; and ran away with it like a hound with a good bone in
his mouth. They had plucked off my mantle and kerchief;
and finally the villains left me standing alone in a pair of
slops : then they hied all together to the door where my bags
lay. But I thought they would not immediately find my pistol
in the dark ; and so it was.

— Now the Emir's man stood again at the gate, beating
and calling loudly to be admitted : and the porter went like a
truant to open. " What has happened ? " quoth the officer who
entered. " They have stripped the Nasrany." — "Who has done
this ? " " It was the Kahtany, in the beginning." " And this
fellow, I answered, was one of the nimblest of them ! " The rest
had fled into the hostel building, when the Emir's man came in.
"Oh, the shame! (quoth the officer) that one is robbed in
the Kasr of the Emir ; and he a man who bears letters from
the Sooltan, what have you done ? the Lord curse you all to-
gether." " Let them, I said, bring my clothes, although they
have rent them." — " Others shall be given thee by the Emir."
The lurkers came forth at his call from their dark corners ; and
he bade them, " Bring the stranger his clothes : — and all, he said
to me, that they have robbed shall be restored, upon pain of
cutting off the hand ; wellah the hand of anyone with whom
is found aught shall be laid in thy bags for the thing that

THE KM IK'S OFFICER J45

st< >lfn I came to load thee to a lodging prepared for
tln-o; but I must now return to the Emir: — and (naming
tin-in) thou, and thou, and thou, do no more thus, to bi
on you the displeasure of the Emir." They answered, " We
had not done it, but he refused to say, La ilah ilV Ullah" —
" This is their falsehood! — for to please them I said it four or
five times; and hearken ! I will say it again, La ilah, ill' Ulhih."
— Officer: " I go, and shall be back anon." — " Leave me no more
among robbers." — "Fear not, none of them will do anything
further against you"; and he bade the porter close the gates
behind him.

He returned soon : and commanded those wretches, from
the Emir, " upon pain of the hand," to restore all that they
had robbed from the Nasrany ; he bade also the porter, make a
fire in the porch, to give us light. The Kahtany swordsman,
who had been the ringleader of them — he was one of the Emir's
band — adjured me to give a true account of the money which
was in my purse . * for my words might endanger his hand ; and
if I said but the sooth, the Lord would show mo mercy.' —
" Dost thou think, Miserable, that a Christian man should be
such as thyself ! " — " Here is the purse, quoth the officer ; how
much money should be therein ? take it, and count thy derdhim
[SpaX/4"]-" I found their barbarous hands had been in it; for
there remained only a few pence ! " Such and such lacks." —
Officer : " Oh ! ye who have taken the man's money, go and fetch
it, and the Lord curse you." The swordsman went ; and came
back with the money, — two French gold pieces of 20 francs : all
that remained to me in this bitter world. Officer : " Say now,
is this all thy fultis ? "— " That is all."—" Is there any more ? "
"No!" — The Kahtany showed me his thanks with a wonder-
ing brutish visage. Officer : " And what more ? " — " Such and
such." The wretches went, and came again with the small
things and what else they had time, after stripping me (it was
by good fortune but a moment), to steal from my bags. Officer :
" Look now, hast thou all, is there anything missing ? " — " Yes,
my watch" (the aneroid, which after the pistol was my most
care in Arabia) ; but they exclaimed, " What watch ! no, we
have restored all to him already." Officer: "Oh, you liars,
you cursed ones, you thieves, bring this man his watch ! or the
(guilty) hand is forfeited to the Emir." It was fetched with
delays ; and of this they made restitution with the most un-
willingness : the metal gilt might seem to them fine gold. —
To my comfort, I found on the morrow that the instru-
ment was uninjured: I might yet mark in it the height of a
fathom.

VOL. II. K

146 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

He said now, ' It was late, and I should pass the night here.' —
" Lend me a sword, if I must sleep in this cursed place ; and if
any set upon me again, should I spare him ? " — " There is no
more danger, and as for these they shall be locked in the coffee-
hall till the morning : " and he led away the offenders. — The
officer had brought my papers : only the safe-conduct of Aneybar
was not among them !

When the day broke the Emir's officer — whose name was
Jeyber — returned to me : I asked anew to visit the Emir.
Jeyber answered, he must first go and speak with him. When
he came again, he laid my bags on his infirm shoulders saying,
he would bring me to my lodging. He led me through an out-
lying street ; and turned into a vast ruinous yard, before a great
building — now old and crumbling, that had been the Emir's
palace in former days : [the house walls here of loam may hardly
stand above one hundred years]. We ascended by hollow clay
stairs to a great hall above ; where two women, his housewives,
were sitting. Jeyber, tenant of all the rotten palace, was a
tribesman of Khatan. In the end was a further room, which
he gave me for my lodging. " I am weary, and thou more,
said he; a cup of kahwa will do us both good : " Jeyber sat
down at his hearth, to prepare the morrow's coffee.

In that there came up some principal persons of the town ;
clad in the (heavy) Mesopotamian wise. A great number of the
well-faring sort in Boreyda are jemmamil, camel masters trad-
ing in the caravans. They are wheat carriers in Mesopotamia ;
they bring down clothing and temmn to Nejd ; they load dates
and corn of Kasim (when the prices serve,) for el-Medina. In
autumn they carry samn, which they have taken up from the
country Nomads, to Mecca ; and from thence they draw coffee.
These burly Arabian citizens resemble peasants ! they were
travelled men ; but I found in them an implacable fanaticism.

Jeyber said when they were gone, " Now shall we visit the
Emir ? " We went forth ; and he brought me through a street
to a place, before the Prince's house. A sordid fellow was
sitting there, like Job, in the dust of their street : two or
three more sate with him, — he might be thirty-five years of
age. I enquired, ' Where was Abdullah the Emir ? ' They
said "He is the Emir!" — "Jeyber (I whispered), is this the
Emir?"— "It is he." I asked the man, <5 Art thou Weled
Mahanna ? " He answered, "Ay." "Is it (I said) a custom
here, that strangers are robbed in the midst of your town ? I
had eaten of your bread and salt ; and your servants set upon
me in your yard" — "They were Beduw that robbed you." — .

A COLD FANA'IK AL OONVENI l< 147

" lint 1 lived with the JJeduw ; and was never robbed in a

inen/il : I never lost ,'inyt hing '" •'«• host's ie,nt. Thou M
they were Heduins; hut they wejvthn Kinir's men ! " --Alulidlah:
iv they were. Kahtan all of them." ||e ;i~|;.-d t

a*, "That, I have not with me ; but, ht»r<< is
He put this to his eyes and returned it. I said, " I give it 1 1 ..... ;
but tliou wilt give me other clothing, for my clothing whi'-h
the Emir's servants have rent." — He would not receive my gift,
the peasant would not make the Nasrany amends; ami I
not money to buy more. "To-day, said he, you depart."
" Whither ? " — " To Aneyza ; and there are certain cameleers —
they left us yesterday, that are going to ,S'/V A ///.•>• .- they will con-
i hit her." — At Siddus (which they suppose to have been
a place of pilgrimage of the idolatrous people «,f th« country, or
"Christians", before Mohammed), is an nniifjue "needle" or
column, \N ith some scoring or epigraph. But this was Abdullah's
guile, he fabled with me of cameleers to Siddus : and then he
cries, " Min /,r.sV///, who will convey the Nasrany on liis camel to

''"'// ?" — which I afterwards knew to signify the palms at
the Hrt{i/t/ cr-Riimuiak : 1 said to him, ' I would rest this day, I
was too weary for riding.' Abdullah granted (albeit unwillingly) ;
for all the Arabians [inhabitants of a weary land] tender human
infirmities. — " Well, as thou wilt ; and that may suffice t !

— There came a young man to bid me to coffee. " They call
you, said Abdullah, and go with him." I followed the messenger
and .Jeyber : we came to some principal house in the town ; and
there we entered a pleasant coffee-hall. I saw the walls par-
getted with fret-work in gypsum ; and about the hearth were
spread Persian carpets. The sweet ghrottha firewood (a tamarisk
kind of the Nefiid) glowed in the hearth, and more was laid up
in a niche, ready to the coffee maker's hand : and such is the
cleanly civil order of all the better citizen households in Kasim.
Here sat a cold fanatical conventicle of well-clad persons ; and a
young man was writing a letter, after an elder's words. But that
did not hinder his casting some reproach, at every pause, upon the
Christian stranger, blaspheming that which he called my impure

ion. — How crabbed seemed to me his young looks, moved
be bestial spirit within ! I took it to be of evil augury, that
none blamed him. And contemptible to an European was the
solemn silence of these infantile greybeards, in whom was nothing
more respectable than their apparel ! I heard no comfortable
word among them ; and wondered why they had called me !

r the second cup, I left them sitting ; and returned to
Jeyber's place, which is called the palace Hajellan : there a boy
met me with two dry girdle-breads, from the guest-house. Such

148 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

sour town bread is crude arid tough ; and I could not swallow it,
even in the days of famine.

The Kasr HajellAn was built by Abdullah, son of Abd-el-
Aziz, princes of Boreyda. Abdullah was murdered by Mahanna,
when he usurped the government with the countenance of the
Wahaby. Mahanna was sheykh over the town for many years,
and his children are Hasan (now emir) and Abdullah.

The young sons of the Prince that was slain fled to the
neighbour town of Aneyza — And after certain years, in a spring
season, when the armed band was encamped with Hasan in
the Nefud, they stole over by night to Boreyda ; and lay hid
in some of their friends' houses. And on the morrow, when
the tyrant passed by, going to his mid-day prayers in the great
mesjid, Abdullah's sons ran suddenly upon him with the knife !
and they slew him there, in- the midst of the street. A horse-
man, one of the band that remained in the town, mounted and
passed the gates, and rode headlong over the Nefud; till he
found the ghrazzn and Hasan. — Hasan hearing this heavy tiding
gave the word to mount ; and the band rode hastily homeward,
to be in Boreyda that night.

Abdullah in the meanwhile who, though he have a leg short,
is nimble of his butcherly wit, held fast in the town. In all
this fear and trouble, his was yet the stronger part ; and the
townspeople, long daunted by the tyranny of Mahanna, were
unready to favour the young homicides. And so well Abdullah
wrought, that ere there was any sedition, he had enclosed the
princelings in an house.

It was nightfall when Abdullah, with his armed men, came
before their door ; and to give light (to the horrid business), a
bon-fire was kindled in the street. Abdullah's sons and a few
who were their companions within, desperately defended their
lives with matchlocks, upon the house head. — Some bolder spirits
that came with Abdullah advanced to the gate, under a shield
they had made them of a door (of rude palm boarding), with a
thick layer of dates crammed upon it. And sheltered thus from
weak musketry, they quickly opened a hole, poured-in powder
and laid the train. A brand was fetched ! — and in the hideous
blast every life within the walls perished, — besides one young^
man, miserably wounded ; who (with a sword in his hand) would
have leapt down, as they entered, and escaped ; and he could
not : but still flying hither and thither he cursed-on and detested
them, till he fell by a shot. — Hasan arriving in the night, found
the slayers of his father already slain, and the town in quiet;
and he was Emir of Boreyda,.. — Others of the princely family of

Till-; in i.\ors K.vsft 149

tins town I Saw afterward dwelling in exile at ' : and one

of two (.Id lnvlhren, my patients DOW 'id Mind, was he

\vlii) should have been by inheritance Kmir oi Boreydal

I wandered in tins waste Kasr, which, as a princely resi-
dence, might be compared with the Kasr at, Ilayil ; although
less, as the principality of Boreyda is less. But if we com]
the towns, Hfiyil is a half Beduin town-village, with a for
suk ; Horeyda is a great civil township of the midland Nejd
life. The palace court, largo as a market place, is returned to
the Nefud sand ! Within the ruinous Kasr I found a coffee-hall
having all the height of the one-storied building, with galleries
above — in such resembling the halls of ancient England, and of
goodly proportion : the walls of sandy clay were adonied with
p.irgetting of jis. This silent and now (it seems) time-worn
Kasr, here in the midst of Desert Arabia, had been built, in our
fathers' days ! I admired the gypsum fretwork of their clay
walls : such dedale work springs as a plant under the hands of
the Semitic artificers, and is an imagery of their minds' vision
of Nature ! — which they behold not as the Pythagoreans con-
tained in few pure lines, but all-adorned and unenclosed.
And is their crust-work from India ? We find a skill in raw
clay-work in Syria ; clay storing-jars, pans, hearths and corn-
hutches are seen in all their cottages. In Lebanon th« earthen
walls and pillars, in some rich peasants' houses, are curiously
crusted with clay fretwork, and stained in barbaric wise.

— Admirable seemed the architecture of that clay palace!
[the sufficiency of the poorest means, in the Arabs' hands,
to a perfect end]. The cornice ornament of these builders is
that we call the shark's-tooth, as in the Moth If at Hfiyil.
A rank of round-headed blind arches is turned for an appear-
ance of lightness in the outer walling, and painted in green
and red ochre. Perchance the builder of Kasr Hajellan was
some Bagdad master, mudllcm — that which we may understand
of some considerable buildings, standing far from any civil soil
in certain desert borders. Years before I had seen a kella
among the ruins of 'Utherah in mount Seir, where is a great
welling pool, a watering of the Iloweytat : it was a rusty
building but not ruinous ; and M ah mud from Maan told me,
* The kella had been built in his time, &?/ the ticduw ! ' I asked
in great astonishment, " If Beduw had skill in masonry ? " —
Mahmiul: " Nay, but they fetched a muallem from Damascus ;
who set them to draw the best stones from the ruins, and as he
showed them so the Beduins wrought and laid the courses." In
that Beduin kella were not a few loopholes and arches, and the

150 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

whole frame had been built by his rude prentices without mortar!
In Beduins is an easy wit in any matter not too remote from
their minds ; and there are tribes that in a summer's day have
become ploughmen. — Jeyber inhabited the crumbling walls of
the eld Moth if. The new peasant lords of Boreyda keep no public
hospitality ; for which they are lightly esteemed by the dwellers
in the desert.

I went out with Jeyber to buy somewhat in the suk, and see
the town. We passed through a market for cattle forage, mostly
vetches : and beyond were victuallers' shops, — in some of them
I saw hanging huge (mutton — perhaps Mesopotamian) sausages !
and in many were baskets of parched locusts. Here are even
cookshops — yet unknown in the Beduin-like Hayil — where one
may have a warm mess of rice and boiled mutton, or else camel
flesh for his penny. A strauger might live at Boreyda, in the
midst of Nomad Arabia, nearly as in Mesopotamia; saving that
here are no coffee taverns. Some of those who sat selling
green stuff in the stalls, were women ! — Damascus is not so
civil! and th ere are only a few poor saleswomen at Aneyza Bor-
eyda, a metropolis of Oasis Arabia, is joined to the northern
settled countries by the trading caravans; and the B. Temim
townsmen are not unlike the half-blooded Arabs of those border
provinces.

Elvish boys and loiterers in the street gaped upon the Nas-
rany stranger ; and they gathered as we went. Near the mejlis
or market square there was sitting, on a clay bench, that Galla
swordsman of the Emir, whose visage I had noted yester-
evening, without the gate. The swarthy swordsman reproved
Jeyber, for bringing me out thus before the people ; then rising,
with a stick, he laid load upon the dusty mantles of some of
them, in the name of the Emir. Jeyber, liberal minded as a
Beduwy but timid more than townsfolk, hearing this talk, led
me back hastily by bye-streets : I would have gone about to
visit another part of the town, but he brought me again by
solitary ways to his place. He promised, that he would ride with
me on the morrow to Aneyza ; " Aneyza, he said, is not far off."
These towns were set down on maps with as much as a journey
between them : but what was there heretofore to trust in maps
of Arabia ! Jeyber, whose stature and manners showed the
Beduin blood, was of those Kahtan Beduin strangers, who
were now wandering in el-Kasim. Poor, among his tribes-
men, but of a sheykhly house, he had left the desert life, to
be of the Emir's armed service in Boreyda. The old con-
trariety of fortune was written in his meagre visage ; he was
little past the middle age, and his spirits half spent. The mild

Ti'MULT 151

Bedoin nfttare sweetened in him his K a) it .'my fanaticism :

I was to-day a I liaif'-nllah in liis household: he maintained
th'Mvl'ore mv raiiM- in the town, and \viis my advocate with the
swine Abdullah. Hut tin- fanatical lininnur was Tint qu«-i
in him; for somr one sa\ing, "This (man) could i

er-Kiath; for tlu-y would kill him!" Jeyber responded, half-
smiling, "Av,tl Dfttere there; they mij uiler

him Amongst thrm." I Ir spoke also wit h rancour of the hetero-

d.»\- Moliannnrdanism of Nrjrfm fwhosr inhabitants are in rrli-
i /!ui/ii<t ii/i/r/i; 'like the people of Mascat']. Jeybar had
his former life in thoso southern countries: \Vady
Dauasir, and Wady liiVha, he said, are full of good villages.

The mid-day heat was come ; and he went to slumber in
a further part of the waste building. I had reposed somewhile,
in my chamber, when a creaking of the old door, paint rd in
vrrmilion, startled me! — and a sluttish young woman entered.

ked, wherefore had she broken my rest? Her answer was
like some old biblical talk; Tekhdlliny antm ft hotlmak?
'Suffer me to sleep in thy bosom.' — Who could have sent this
lurid quean ? the Arabs are the basest of enemies, — hoped they
to find an occasion to accuse the Nasrany ? But the kind
damsel was not daunted ; for when I chided she stood to rate
the. stranger; saying, with the loathly voice of misery, 'Aha!
the cursed Nasrany ! and I was about to be slain, by faithful
men ; that were in the way, sent from the Emir, to do it ! and
I might not now escape them.' — I rose and put this baggage
forth, and fastened the door. — But I wondered at her words,
and mused that only for the name of a Religion, (O Chimaora
of human self-love, malice and fear!) I was fallen daily into
such mischiefs, in Arabia. — Now Jeyber came again from nap-
ping ; and his hareem related to him the adventure : Jeyber left
us saying, he must go to the Emir.

Soon after this we heard people of the town flocking about
our house, and clamouring under the casements, which opened
backward upon a street, and throwing up stones ! and some
noisy persons had broken into the great front yard ! — The stair
was immediately full of them : and they bounced at our door
which the women had barred. — " Alas, said the hareem, wring-
inLr their hands, what can we do now? for the riotous people
will kill thee ; and Jeyber is away." One of them was a towns-
woman, the other was a Ueduwfa: both were good towards the

r. I sat down saying to them, "My sisters, you must
defend the house with your tongues." — They were ready; and
the townswoman looking out backward chided them that made

152 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

this hubbub in the street. " Ha ! uncivil people j who be they
that throw up stones into the apartment of the hareem ? akhs !
what would ye ? — ye seek what ? God send a sorrow upon you !
— Oh ! ye seek Khalil the Nasrany ? but here is not Khalil ; ye
fools, he is not here : away with you. Go ! I say, for shame,
and Ullah curse you." — And she that kept the door cried to
them that were without, "Aha! what is your will? — akhs!
who are these that beat like to break our door ? 0 ye devil-
sick and shameless young men ! Khalil is not here ; he went
forth, go and seek the Nasrany, go ! We have told you Khalil
went forth, we know not whither, — akhs ! [they knocked now
on the door with stones.] Oh you shameless fellows ! would ye
break through folks' doors, to the hareem ? Ullah send a very
pestilence upon you all ; and for this the Emir will punish you."
Whilst she was speaking there was a confused thrusting and
shuffling of feet without our door ; the strokes of their sticks
and stones sounded hideously upon the wood. — The faithful
women's tongues yet delayed them ! and I put my hope in the
stars, that Jeyber would return with speed, But if the besiegers
burst in to rend me in pieces, should I spare the foremost of
them? The hareem cried on, "Why beat thus, ye cursed
people ? — akhs ! will ye beat down our door indeed ? "

At length came Jeyber again ; and in the name of the Emir
he drove them all forth, and locked them out of his yard. —
When he entered, he shrunk up his shoulders and said to me,
" They are clamouring to the Emir for thy death ! * No Nasrany,
they say, ever entered Boreyda ' : there is this outcry in the town,
and Abdullah is for favouring the people ! — I have now pleaded
with him. If, please Ullah, we may pass this night in safety,
to-morrow when my thelul shall be come — and I have sent for
her — I will convey thee by solitary lanes out of the place ; and
bring thee to Aneyza." — As we were speaking, we heard those
townspeople swarming anew in his court ! the foremost
mounted again upon our stairs, — and the door was open. But
Jeyber, threatening grievous punishments of the Emir, drove
them down once more ; and out of his yard. When he returned,
he asked his house-wives, with looks of mistrust, who it was
had undone the gate (from within) ? which he had left barred !
He said, he must go out again, to speak with Abdullah ; but
should not be long absent. I would not let him pass, till he had
promised me to lock his gates, and carry the (wooden) key
with him. There remained only this poor soul, and the timber
of an old door, betwixt me, a lonely alien, and the fanatical
wildness of this townspeople. When he came again he said the
town was quiet : Abdullah, at his intercession, had forbidden

A I* ANATK' 3TOUNQ SlIKVKIf i:,3

to make more ado, the riotous were gone home; and he had

left tin- gate open.

After tli is tli en- came up sonic ot her of the principal dti/ens,
to visit me: they s:it- about the hearth in I'.agdad gowns and
In.-se kerchiefs and red raps; whilst .Jeyber made coffee.
Amongst them appeared the great white (Medina) turban — yet
spotless, though he slept in it — of that old vagabnnd issue of
the neby! who a month before had been a consenting witness
to my mischiefs at Ilfiyil ! " Who art thou ? " I asked.— " Oli !
dost thou not remember the time, when we were together in
I layil ? " — " And returnest thou so soon from India ? " — " I saw
the Kmir, and ended my business; also I go not to el-Hind,
until after the Ilaj " There came in, on the heels of them, a
young sheykh, who arrived then trom Ilii-an's camp; which
at half a journey, in the Neffid. He sat down among them,
and began to question Avith me in lordly sort; and I enquired
of the absent Kmir. I found in him a natural malice; and
MM improbity of face which became the young man's injurious
in-olenee. After these heavy words, he said further, "Art thou
Nasiany or Musslim?" — " Nasrany, which all this town knows;
now leave questioning me." — " Then the Moslem in will kill thee,
ple.-iso Ullah ! Ilearest thou? the Moslemin will kill thee ! "
and the squalid young man opened a leathern mouth, that
grinning on me to his misplaced lap ears, discovered vast red
circles of mule's teeth. — Surely the fanatical condition in religion
[though logical!] is never far from a radically ill nature ; and
doubtless the javel was an offspring of generations of depraved
Arab wretches. Jeyber, though I was to-day under his roof,
smiled a withered half-smile of Kahtany fanaticism, hearing
words which are honey to their ears, — 'a kafir to be slain by the
lemin ! ' Because the young man was a sheykh and Hasan's
enger, I sat in some thought of his venomous speaking.
When they departed, I said to Jeyber my conceit of that base
young fanatic ; who answered, shrinking the shoulders, that I
had guessed well, for he was a bad one !

— My hap was to travel in Arabia in time of a great strife of
the religion [as they understood], with (God and His Apostle's
enemies) the Nasara. And now the idle fanatical people cla-
moured to the Emir, ' Since Ullah had delivered a Nasrany
into their hands, wherefore might they not put him to death ? '
At length the sun of this troubled day was at her going down.
Then 1 went out to breathe the cooling air upon the terrace:
and finding a broken ladder climbed to a higher part of our roof,
to survey this great Arabian town. — But some townspeople in
he street immediately, espying me, cried out, " Come down !

154 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

Come down ! a kafir should not overlook a beled of the Mos-
lemin." Jeyber brought me a ration of boiled mutton and rice
(which he had purchased in the suk) : when I had eaten he said
we were brethren. He went out again to the Emir.

Jeyber returned all doubtful and pensive ! ' The people, he
said, were clamouring again to Abdullah ; who answered them,
that they might deal with me as they would : he had told them
already, that they might have slain the Nasrany in the desert ;
but it could not be done in the town.' Jeyber asked me now,
' Would I forsake my bags, and flee secretly from Boreyda on
foot ? ' I answered " No ! — and tell me sooth, Jeyber ! hast
thou no mind to betray me ? " He promised as he was a faith-
ful man that he would not. " Well, what is the present
danger ? " — " I hope no more, for this night, at least in my
house." — " How may I pass the streets in the morning ? " —
" We will pass them ; the peril is not so much in the town as
of their pursuing." — " How many horsemen be there in Boreyda,
a score ? " — " Ay, and more." — " Go quickly and tell Abdullah,
Khalil says I am r&jol Dowla, one who is safeguarded (my
papers declare it) by the government of the Sooltan : if an evil
betide me (a guest) among you, it might draw some trouble
upon yourselves. For were it to be suffered that a traveller,
under the imperial protection, and only passing by your town,
should be done to death, for the name of a religion, which is
tolerated by the Sooltan ? Neither let them think themselves
secure here, in the midst of deserts ; for ' long is the arm of the
Dowla ! ' Remember Jidda, and Damascus ! and the guilty
punished, by commandment of the Sooltan ! " Jeyber answered,
' He would go and speak these words to Abdullah.'

Jeyber returned with better looks, saying that Abdullah
allowed my words: and had commanded that none should any
more molest the Nasrany ; and promised him, that no evil
should befall me this night. Jeyber: "We be now in peace,
blessed be the Lord ! go in and rest, Khalil ; to be ready be-
times."

I was ready ere the break of day ; and thought it an hundred
years till I should be out of Boreyda. At sunrise Jeyber sat
down to prepare coffee ; and yet made no haste ! the promised
theliil was not come. — " And when will thy thelul be here ? " —
"At some time before noon." — "How then may we come to
Aneyza to-night ? " — " I have told thee, that Aneyza is not far
off." My host also asked for remedies for his old infirmities.
— "At Aneyza!" — "Nay, but now; for I would leave them

.1'IM.SION OF THE XA8R\NY

here." When he lind received hi.- medicines, .I.-ylx-r began to
make it sf range of his tlu-Inl-riding \« \ I thought an

ln»t would not. forswear himself; hut all their life is passed in
fraud and deceit. — In tliis OftmC up the Kahtany who had been

ring-leader in the former night's tn.i;ble; • down before

In'-- tribesman's h.arth: where lie was wont to drink the n

row's cup. Jeyber wonld h*ye MH- ix-licvc that the fellow had

!i--.-n swinged yesterday before Abdullah: I saw no sm-l

him. '1'ln1 wretch who had latt ly injured nn-. would now have
maintained my caiist* ! I said to Jeyber's Bednin jara, who sat
with us, " T.-ll ni<«, is not he poss.-sM d l.y a jin ? " 'I'lrn yonn^
n:an answci-.-.l for hinisclf, " Ay, Klialil, I am somewhiles a littlo
lunatic." Hi- had come to ask the Nasrany for medicines, — in
which surely lie had not trusted one of his own religion.

— A limping footfall sounded on the palace stairs: it was the
lame Kmir Abdullah who entered ! h-jmincr on his staff. Sordid

the (peasant) princeling's tunic and kerchief : he sat fl-
at the hearth, and Jeyber prepared fresh coffee. Abdullah
said, — showing me a poor man standing by the door and that
came in with him; "This is he that will carry thee on his
camel to Aneyza ; rise! and bring out thy things." — "Jeyber
promises to convey me upon his theliil." But now my host
(who had but fabled) excused himself, saying, ' he would follow
us, when his thelul were come.' Abdullah gave the cameleer
his wages, the quarter of a mejidy, eleven pence. — The man
took my bags upon his shoulders, and brought me by a lonely
street to a camel couched before his clay cottage. We mounted
and rode by lanes out of the town. * * *

CHAPTER VIII

ANEYZA

Now we came upon the open Nefud, where I saw the sand
ranging in long banks : • adanat and kethib is said in this
country speech of the light shifting Nefud sand ; Jiirda is
the sand-bank's weather side, the lee side or fold is Idghraf
[Idhaf], Jiirda or Jorda (in the pi. Jdrad and Jerad) is
said of a dune or hillock, in which appear clay-seams, sand
and stones, and whereon desert bushes may be growing. The
road to Aneyza is a deep-worn drift-way in the uneven Nefud ;
but in the sand (lately blotted with wind and rain,) I per-
ceived no footprint of man or cattle ! — Bye and bye my cam-
eleer Hasan turned our beast from the path, to go over the
dunes : we were the less likely thus to meet with Beduins,
not friends of Boreyda. The great tribes of these diras,
Meteyr and Ateyba, are the allies of Zdmil, Emir of Aneyza. —
Zamil was already a pleasant name in my ears : I had heard,
even amongst his old foes of Harb, that Zamil was a good
gentleman, and that the " Child of Mahanna " (for whom,
two years ago, they were in the field with Ibn Rasliid,
against Aneyza) was a tyrannical churl : it was because of
the Harb enmity that I had not ridden from their menzils, to
Aneyza.

The Nefud sand was here overgrown with a canker-weed
which the Aarab reckon unwholesome ; and therefore I struck
away our camel that put down his long neck to browse ;
but Hasan said, " Nay ; the town camels eat of this herb, for
there is little else." We saw a nomad child keeping sheep :
and I asked my rafik, ' When should we come to Aneyza ? ' —
" By the sunsetting." I found the land-height to be not more
than 2500 feet. When we had ridden slowly three hours,
we fell again into the road, by some great-grown tamarisks.
* Negily quoth Hasan, we will alight here and rest out the hot
mid-day hours.' I saw trenches dug under those trees by

A TREACHEROUS r'AMKLKKi! 157

locust hunters. I a-ked, "Is it far now ?" -" Aneyza is not,
f.-ir dV." "Tell mo truth rafik, art thoii carrying me to
Am-;. —"Thou believest not; — see here !" (lie drew me

out a bundle of letters — and yet they seemed worn and old).
" All these, he said, are merchants' letters which 1 am tod.-,
to day in Aneyza ; and to fetch th<- gnods from th'-nce." — And
had 1 not seen him accept a letter for Aneyza ! Il:i.~an found
some\\hat in my words, for he did not halt ; we mi-jh'
come ten miles from Uoreyda. The soil shelved before
and under the next tamnri^ks I saw a little oozing water. We
were pre-ently in a wady bottom, not a stone-cast over ; and
in crossing we plashed through trickling water ! I asked," What
bed is this ? " — An$v'»-r : " KL-WADY " — that is, we were in (the
midst of) the Wady er-Riimmah. We came up by oozing (brack-
ish) water to a palm wood unenclosed, where are grave-like pits
of a fathom digged beside young palm-sets to the ground water.
The plants are watered by hand a year or two, till they have put
down roots to the saltish ground moisture.

It is nearly a mile to pass through this palm wood, where
only few (older) steins are seen grown aloft above the rest ;
because such outlying possessions are first to the destruc-
tion, in every warfare. I saw through the trees, an high-builr,
court-wall, wherein the husband men may shelter themselves
in any alarms ; and Hasan showed me, in an open ground,
where Ibn Rashid's tents stood two years ago, when he came
with Weled Mahanna against Aneyza. We met only two
negro labourers; and beyond the palms the road is again in
th-' Xefiid. Little further at our right hand, were some first
enclosed properties; and we drew bridle at a stone trough, a
I, set by the landowner in his clay wall, with a channel from
his suanies : the trough was dry, for none now passed by that
way to or from Boreyda. We heard creaking of well-wheels,
and voices of harvesters in a field. " Here, said Jla^an, as he
put down my bags, is the place of repose : rest in the shadow
of this wall, whilst I go to water the camel. And where is the
girby ? that I may bring thee to drink ; you might be thirsty
before evening, when it will be time to enter the town, —
thus says Abdullah ; and now open thy eyes, for fear of the
Bednw. I let the man go, but made him leave his spear
with me.

When he came again with the waterskin, Hasan said he had
loosed out the camel to pasture ; " and wellah Khalil I must go
after her, for see! the beast has strayed. Reach me my romh,
and I will run to turn her, or she will be gone far out in the
Nefud."— " Go, but the spear remains with me." " Ullah !

158 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

doubt not thy rafik, should I go unarmed ? give me my lance,
and I will be back to thee in a moment." I thought, that it
the man were faithless and I compelled him to carry me into
Aneyza, he might have cried out to the fanatical townspeople :
' This is the Nasrany ! ' — " Oar camel will be gone, do not delay
me."— "Wilt thou then forsake me here ? "— " No wellah, by
this beard ! " I cast his lance upon the sand, which taking up,
he said, " Whilst I am out, if thou have need of anything, go
about the coraer of the wall yonder ; so thou wilt see a palm
ground, and men working. Rest now in the shadow, and make
thyself a little mereesy, for thou art fasting ; and cover these
bags ! let no man see them. Aneyza is but a little beyond that
dddn there ; thou mayest see the town from thence : I will run
now, and return." I let him pass, and Hasan, hieing after his
camel, was hidden by the sand billows. I thought soon, I would
see what were become of him, and casting away my mantle I
ran barefoot in the Nefud ; and from a sand dune I espied
Hasan riding forth upon his camel — for he had forsaken me !
he fetched a circuit to go about the Wady palms homeward. I
knew then that I was betrayed by the secret commission of
Abdullah, and remembered his word, " Who will carry the
Nasrany to the Wady ? "

This was the cruellest fortune which had befallen me in
Arabia ! to be abandoned here without a chief town, in the
midst of fanatical Nejd, I had but eight reals left, which
might hardly more than carry me in one course to the nearest
coast. I returned and armed myself ; and rent my maps in
small pieces, — lest for such I should be called in question,
amongst lettered citizens.

A negro man and wife came then from the palms, carrying
firewood towards Aneyza : they had seen us pass, and asked me
simply, " Where is thy companion and the camel ? " — After this
I went on under the clay walling towards the sound of suanies ;
and saw a palm ground and an orchard house. The door was
shut fast : I found another beyond ; and through the chinks I
looked in, and espied the owner driving, — a plain-natured face.
I pushed up his gate and entered at a venture with, " Peace be
with thee ; " and called for a drink of water. The goodman
stayed a little to see the stranger ! then he bade his young
daughter fetch the bowl, and held up his camels to speak with
me. " Drink if thou wilt, said he, but we have no good water."
The taste was bitter and unwholesome ; but even this cup of
water would be a bond between us.

I asked him to lend me a camel or an ass, to carry my things
to the town, and I would pay the hire. I told further how I

NO KKMIT
hither,— with a cameleer tY-nn i;<>reyda; who whi! • I

rested in the heat, had forsaken rneni^h his gate: that IwasaD

hakim, and if tin • in this pla'-e I hud medi<

t<. relieve 1 In-ni.--*' \\VI1, bide till my hid return with a ram>-l :

I e-o (he s;iid to his daughter) with thU man ; h-
stick and drive, and let n.it the r:imels stand.— What be they,
() stranger, and where lefte-,1 thou thy thin •:>•! thou

sh'Hildst not have left them out of sight And angoarded; how, if

li'Mild not, find them — ?" Tl; ; and taking

great, bags on my shoulders, I tott- red back over the. Nef'i'id to
the gnud man's gate; n juicing inxvardly, that I might DOW
b.-.-ir all 1 pOMeSMd in the world, lie hade me sit down there
(without), whilst he went to fetch an ass. — "Wilt thou pay a

re and a halt' (threepence) ? M There camo now three or
four irravt' eldei- men from the plantations, and they were going
in at the next gate to drink their afternoon kahwa. The good-
man staved them and said, "This is a stranger, — he cannot

in here, and we cannot receive him in our house ; he ,
for carriage to the town." They answered, he should do well
to !V-teli the ass and send me to Aneyza. " And what art thou ?
(th-'v said to me) — we go in now to coffee ; has anyone heard the
ithin?" Another: "They have cried to prayers in the town,
but we cannot always hear it ; — for is not the sun gone down to
the assr ? then pray we here together." They took their stand

utly, and my host joined himself to the row ; they called
me also, " Come and pray, come ! " — " I have prayed already."
Thf\y marvelled at my words; and so fell to their formal re-
citing and prostrations. \Yhen they rose, my host came to
me with troubled looks: — "Thou dost not pray, hmm!" said
he: and by those grave men's countenance, they were

iaded that I could be no right Moslem. "Well send
him forward," quoth the chief of them, and they entered the
gate.

My bags were laid now upon an ass. We departed : and little

nd the first ddan, as Hasan had foretold me, was the begin-
ning of cornfields ; and palms and fruit trees appeared, and
some houses of outlying orchards. — My companion said [he \
afraid !] " It is far to the town, and I cannot go there to-night ;
but 1 will leave thee with one yonder who is ibnjutid, a son of
bounty ; and in the morning he will send thee to Aneyza." —
We came on by a wide road and un walled, till he drew up his
ass at a rude gateway; there was an orchard house, and he
knocked loud and called, " Ibrahim ! " An old father came to
the gate, who Opened it to the half and stayed — seeing my clot
rent (by the thieves at Boreyda) ! and not knowing what strange

160 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

person I might be : — but he guessed I was some runaway soldier
from the Harameyn or el- Yemen, as there had certain passed by
Aneyza of late. He of the ass spoke for me ; and then that
housefather received me. They brought in my bags, to his
clay house ; and he locked them in a store closet : so without
speaking he beckoned with the hand, and led me out in his
orchard, to the "diwan" (their clean sanded sitting-place in the
field) ; and there left me.

Pleasant was the sight of their tilled ground with corn stub-
bles and green plots of vetches, jet, the well-camels' provender ;
and borders of a dye-plant, whose yellow blossoms are used by
the townswomen to stain the partings of their hair. When this
sun was nigh setting, I remembered their unlucky prayer-hour !
and passed hastily to the further side of their palms ; but I was
not hidden by the clear-set rows of trees : when I came again
in the twilight, they demanded of me, * Why I prayed not ? and
wherefore had I not been with them at the prayers ? ' Then
they said over the names of the four orthodox sects of Islam,
and questioned with me, " To which of them pertainest thou ;
or be'st thou (of some heterodox belief) a rdfuthy ? " — a word
which they pronounced with enmity. I made no answer, and
they remained in some astonishment. They brought me, to
sup, boiled wheat in a bowl and another of their well water ;
there was no greater hospitality in that plain household. I
feared the dampish (oasis) air and asked, where was the coffee
chamber. Answer : " Here is no kahwa, and we drink none."
They sat in silence, and looked heavily upon the stranger, who
had not prayed.

He who brought me the bowl (not one of them) was a manly
young man, of no common behaviour ; and he showed in his
words an excellent understanding. I bade him sup with me. —
" I have supped." — " Yet eat a morsel, for the bread and salt
between us : " he did so. After that, when the rest were away,
I told him what I was, and asked him of the town. " Well, he
said, thou art here to-night ; and little remains to Aneyza, where
they will bring thee in the morning ; I think there is no danger
— Zamil is a good man : besides thou art only passing by them.
Say to the Emir to-morrow, in the people's hearing, ' I am a
soldier from Btled el-Asir ' (a good province in el- Yemen, which
the Turks had lately occupied)." — Whilst we were speaking,
the last ithin sounded from the town ! I rose hastily ; but the
three or four young men, sons of Ibrahim, were come again, and
began to range themselves to pray ! they called us, and they
called to me the stranger with insistence, to take our places
with them. I answered : " I am over-weary, I will go and

ENTER ANEY/A 101

•(•/' — '/'//'• /'/•" 'H- Frini'l : "Ay-ay, the stranger says

well, he is come from a journey; show him the place without

" "

. \\linv 1m may lie down." — " F would sleep in the house,
not here abroad." — ''Hut first let him pmy ; ho! thou,
come and pray, come!" — Th<- I<'i-n ml : "Let him alone, and
show the weary man to his rest." — " There is but the wood-
house." — " Well then to the wood-house, and let him sleep
ini mediately." One of them went with me, and brought me to
a threshold : the floor was sunk a foot or two, and I fell in a
dark place full of sweet tamarisk boughs. After their praying
came all the brethren: they sat before the door in the feeble
moonlight, and murmured, * I had not prayed ! — and could this
be a Musslim ? ' But I played the sleeper ; and after watching
half an hour they left me. How new to us is this religiosity,
in rude young men of the people ! but the Semitic religion — so
cold, and a strange plant, in the (idolatrous) soil of Europe, is
like to a blood passion, in the people of Moses and Mohammed.
An hour before day I heard one of these brethren creeping in

— it was to espy if the stranger would say the dawning prayers !
When the morrow was light all the brethren stood before the
door ; and they cried to me, Ma sulleyt, ' Thou didst not say the
prayer ! ' — " Friends, I prayed." — " Where washed you then ? "

— This I had not considered, for I was not of the dissembler's
craft. Another brother came to call me ; and he led me up the
house stairs to a small, clean room : where he spread matting
on the clay floor, and set before me a dish of very good dates,
with a bowl of whey ; and bade me breakfast, with their homely
word, fuk er-rfy ' Loose the fasting spittle ' : (the Bed. say rtj,
for rik). " Drink ! " said he, and lifted to my hands his hospi-
table bowl. — After that he brought the ass and loaded my bags.
to carry them into the town. We went on in the same walled
road, and passed a ruinous open gate of Aneyza. Much of the
town wall was there in sight ; which is but a thin shell, with
many wide breaches. Such clay walling might be repaired in
a few days, and Aneyza can never be taken by famine ; for the
wide town walls enclose their palm grounds : the people, at this
time, were looking for war with Boreyda.

We went by the first houses, which are of poor folk ; and the
young man said he would leave me at one of the next doors,
' where lived a servant of (the Emir) Zdmil.9 He knocked with
the ring, which [as at Damascus] there is set upon all their
doors, like a knocker ; and a young negro housewife opened :
her goodman (of the butcher's craft,) was at this hour in the suk.
He was bedel or public sergeant, for Zamil : and to such rude
offices, negroes (men of a blunter metal) are commonly chosen.

VOL. II. L

162 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

My baggage was set down in the little camel yard, of their poor
but clean clay cottage. Aly> the negro householder, came home
soon after ; and finding a stranger standing in his court, he
approached and kissed the guest, and led me into his small
kahwa ; where presently, to the pleasant note of the coffee
pestle, a few persons assembled — mostly black men his neigh-
bours. And Aly made coffee, as coffee is made even in poor
houses at Aneyza. After the cup, the poor man brought-in on
a tray a good breakfast : large was the hospitality of his humble
fortune, and he sat down to eat with me. — Homeborn negroes,
out of their warmer hearts, do often make good earnest of the
shallow Arabian customs ! Before the cottage row I saw a waste
place, el-Grd ; and some booth or two therein of the miserable
Beduins: the plot, left open by the charity of the owner, was
provided with a public pool of water running from his suanies.
When later I knew them, and his son asked the Nasrany's
counsel, ' What were best to do with the ground ? — because of
the draffe cast there, it was noisome to the common health ' —
I answered, " Make it a public garden : " but that was far from
their Arabian understanding.

I went abroad bye and bye with Aly, to seek Zamil ; though
it were tow, too early, said my negro host : here is the beginning
of the town streets, with a few poor open stalls ; the ways are
cleanly. Two furlongs beyond is the suk, where (at these hours)
is a busy concourse of the townspeople : they are all men,
since maidens and wives come not openly abroad. — At a cross
street, there met us two young gallants. "Ha! said one of
them to Aly, this stranger with thee is a Nasrany ; " — and
turning to me, the coxcombs bid me, " Good morrow, khawaja :"
I answered them, "I am no khawaja, but an Engleysy ; and
how am I of your acquaintance ? " — " Last night we had word of
thy coming from Boreyda : Aly, whither goest thou with him ? "
That poor man, who began to be amazed, hearing his guest
named Nasrany, answered, " To Zamil." — " Zamil is not yet
sitting ; then bring the Nasrany to drink coffee at my beyt.
We are, said they, from Jidda and wont to see (there) all the
kinds of Nasara." They led us upstairs in a great house, by
the market-square, which they call in Kasim el-Mejlis : their
chamber was spread with Persian carpets.

These young men were of the Aneyza merchants at Jidda.
One of them showed me a Winchester (seventeen shooting)
rifle ! ' and there were fifty more (they pretended) in Aneyza :
with such guns in their hands they were not in dread of
warfare [which they thought likely to be renewed,] with Ibn

ZAMTL, EMTR OF \XEY7 \

i-l: in the time of the Jeh&d they had exeroiAecl themselves

as soldiers at Jidda/ The} added malieioii !y, ''And if we

with ii(-iv\d,i, wilt thou be our oaptaia ? "

\Ve soon left them. Aly led me over the open market-
s([ii;ire : and by happy adventure the Emir was now sitting in
his place ; that is ma.de under a small porch upon the Mejlis, at
tlu« street corner which leads to his own (clay) house, and in face
of (lie clothiers' sfik. In the Izmir's porch are two clay banks ;
upon one, bespread with a Persian carpet, sat Zamil, and his
sword lay by him. Zfunil is a small-grown man with a pleasant
weerish visage, and great understanding eyes: as I approached
he looked up mildly. When I stood before him, Zamil rose a
little in his seat, and took me by the hand, and said kindly,
" Be seated, be seated ! " so he made me sit beside him, I said,
" I come now from Boreyda, and am a hakim, an Engleysy,
a Nasrany ; I have these papers with me ; and it may please
tliee to send me to the coast." Zamil perused that which I put
in his hand: — as he read, an uneasy cloud was on his face, for
a moment! But looking up pleasantly, "It is well, he re-
sponded ; in the meantime go not about publishing thyself to
the people, ' I am a Nasrany ; ' say to them, ana askary, I am a
(runaway Ottoman) soldier. Aly, return home with Khalil, and
bring him after midday prayers to kahwa in my house : but
walk not in the public places."

We passed homewards through the clothiers' street, and by
the butchers' market. The busy citizens hardly regarded us ;
yet some man took me by the sleeve ; and turning, I saw one of
those half-feminine slender figures of the Arabians, with painted
eyes, and clad in the Bagdad wise. "0 thou, min eyn, fivm
whence ? quoth he, and art thou a Nasrany ? " I answered,
"Ay:" yet if any asked, "Who is he with thee, Aly?" the
negro responded stoutly, " A stranger, one that is going to
Kuweyt." — Aneyza seemed a pleasant town, and stored with all
things needful to their civil life : we went on by a well-built
mesjid ; but the great mesjid is upon the public place, — all
building is of clay in the Arabian city.

In these days, the people's talk was of the debate and breach
between the town and Boreyda : although lately Weled Ma-
hanna wrote to Zamil ana weled~ak, * I am thy child (to serve
and obey thee) ' ; and Zamil had written, " I am thy friend."

\Vellah, said Aly's gossips at the coffee hearth, there is no
more passage to Boreyda : but in few days the allies of Ziinril
will be come up from the east country, and from the south,
as far as Wady Danasir." Then, they told me. I should see the

164 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

passing continually through this street of a multitude of armed
men.

After the noon ithin, we went down to Zamil's (homely)
house, which is in a blind way out of the mejlis. His coffee
room was spread with grass matting (only) ; and a few persons
were sitting with him. Zamil's elder son, Abdullah, sat behind
the hearth, to make coffee. Tidings were brought in, that
some of the townspeople's asses had been reaved in the Nefud,
by Ateyban (friendly Nomads)! — Zamil sent for one of his
armed riders : and asked him, ' Was his dromedary in the
town?' — "All ready." — "Then take some with you, and ride
on their traces, that you may overtake them to-day ! " — " But
if I lose the thelul — ? " (he might fall amongst enemies). Zamil
answered, " The half loss shall be mine ; " and the man went
out. Zamil spoke demissly, he seemed not made to command ;
but this is the mildness of the natural Arab sheykhs.

— Aly, uncle of the Emir, entered hastily ! Zamil some
years ago appointed him executive Emir in the town ; and
when Zamil takes the field, he leaves Aly his lieutenant in
Aneyza. Aly is a dealer in camels ; he has only few fanatical
friends. All made him room, and the great man sat down
in the highest place. Zamil, the Emir and host, sat leaning
on a pillow in face of the company ; and his son Abdullah
sat drinking a pipe of tobacco, by the hearth ! — but this would
not be tolerated in the street. The coffee was ready, and he
who took up the pot and the cups went to pour out first for
Zamil ; but the Emir beckoned mildly to serve the Emir
Aly. When the coffee had been poured round, Zamil said to
his uncle, " This stranger is an hakim, a traveller from es-
Sham : and we will send him, as he desires, to Kuweyt." — Aly
full of the Wahaby fanaticism vouchsafed not so much as to
cast an eye upon me. " Ugh ! quoth he, I heard say the man
is a Nasrany : wouldst thou have a Nasrany in thy town ? "
Zdmil : " He is a passenger ; he may stay a few days, and there
can be no hurt ! " " Ugh ! " answered Aly ; and when he had
swallowed his two cups he rose up crabbedly, and went forth.
Even Zamil's son was of this Wahaby humour ; twenty years
might be his age : bold faced was the young man, of little
sheykhly promise, and disposed, said the common speech, to be
a niggard. Now making his voice big and hostile, he asked
me — for his wit stretched no further, " What is thy name ? "
When all were gone out, Zamil showed me his fore-arms
corroded and inflamed by an itching malady which he had
suffered these twenty years ! — I have seen the like in a few
more persons at Aneyza. He said, like an Arab, " And if thou
canst cure this, we will give thee/^Ms / "

ZAMIL'S DESCENT 165

Already some sick per -re come there, to seek the

hakim, when I returned to Aly's; and one of them offered me
.HI empty tlttlci'niy or little open shop in a side street by the suka.
— Aly found an ass to carry my bags : and ere the mid-after-
noon, I was sitting in my doctor's shop : and mused, should I
here find rest in Arabia ? \\henthe mm'thin cried to the assr
prayers ; there was a trooping of feet, and neighbours went by
to a mesjid in the end of the street. — Ay, at this day they go
to prayers as hotly, as if they had been companions of the Nuby !
I shut my shop with the rest, and sat close ; I thought this
shutter would shield me daily from their religious importunity.
— " Ullahu akhbar, Ullahu aklibar ! " chanted the muethins of
the town.

After vespers the town is at leisure ; and principal persons
go home to drink the afternoon coffee with their friends.
Some of the citizens returning by this street stayed to see the
Nasrany, and enquire what were his medicines ; for nearly all
the Arabs are diseased, or imagine themselves to be sick or
rise bewitched. How quiet was the behaviour of these towns-
folk, many of them idle persons and children! but Zamil's word
was that none should molest Haj Khalil, — so the good gentle-
man (who heard I had been many times in the " Holy " City)
called me, because it made for my credit and safety among
the people. The civil countenance of these midland Arabian
citizens is unlike the (Beduish) aspect of the townsmen of
Hayil, that tremble in the sight of Ibn Rashid : here is a free
township under the natural Prince, who converses as a private
man, and rules, like a great sheykh of Aarab, amongst his
brethren.

Zamil's descent is from the Sbeya, first Beduin colonists
of this loam-bottom in the Nefud. At this day they are not
many families in Aneyza ; but theirs is the Emirship, and
therefore they say henna el-iimera, ' we are the Emirs.' More
in number are the families of the Beny KJidlid, tribesmen of
that ancient Beduin nation, whose name, before the Wahaby,
was greatest in Nejd ; but above an half of the town are
B. Temim. There are in Aneyza (as in every Arabian place)
several wards or parishes under hereditary sheykhs ; but no
malcontent factions, — they are all cheerfully subject to Zamil.
The people living in unity, are in no dread of foreign enemies.

Some principal persons went by again, returning from their
friends' houses. — One of them approached me, and said, " Hast
thou a knowledge of medicine ? " The tremulous figure of the
speaker, with some drawing of his face, put me in mind of
the Algerine Mohammed Aly, at Medaiii Salih ! But he that

166 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

stood here was a gentle son of Temim, whose good star went
before me from this day to the end of my voyage in Arabia !
Taking my hand in his hand, which is a kind manner of the
Arabs, he said, " Wilt thou visit my sick mother ? "

He led me to his house gate not far distant ; and entering
himself by a side door he came round to open for me : I found
within a large coffee-hall, spread with well-wrought grass mat-
ting, which is fetched hither from el-Hdsa. The walls were
pargetted with fretwork of jis, such as I had seen at Boreyda.
A Persian tapet spread before his fire-pit was the guests' sitting
place; and he sat down himself behind the hearth to make
me .coffee. This was Abdullah el-Kenneyny , the fortunate son
of a good but poor house. He had gone forth a young man
from Aneyza ; and after the first hazards of fortune, was grown
to be one of the most considerable foreign merchants. His
traffic was in corn, at Bosra, and he lived willingly abroad ;
for his heart was not filled in Aneyza, where he despised the
Wahaby straitness and fanaticism. In these days leaving his
merchandise at Bosra to the care of a brother (Salih, who they
told me little resembles him), Abdullah was come to pass a
leisure year at home ; where he hoped to refresh his infirm
health in the air of the Nefud.

When I looked in this man's face he smiled kindly. — " And
art thou, said he, an Engleysy ? but wherefore tell the people
so, in this wild fanatical country ? I have spent many years
in foreign lands, I have dwelt at Bombay, which is under
government of the Engleys : thou canst say thus to me, but
say it not to the ignorant and foolish people ; — what simplicity
is this ! and incredible to me, in a man of Europa. For are
we here in a government country ? no, but in land of the Aarab,
where the name of the Nasara is an execration. A Nasrany
they think to be a son of the Evil One, and (therefore) deserving
of death : an half of this townspeople are Wahabies." — " Should
I not speak truth, as well here as in mine own country ? "
Abdullah: "We have a tongue to further us and our friends,
and to illude our enemies ; and indeed the more times the lie
/is better than the sooth. — Or dreadest thou, that Ullah would
visit it upon thee, if thou assentedst to them in appearance?
Is there not in everything the good and evil?" [even in
lieing and dissembling.] — "I am this second year, in a perilous
country, and have no scathe. Thou hast heard the proverb,
4 Truth may walk through the world unarmed'." — (C But the
Engleys are not thus ! nay, I have seen them full of policy :
in the late warfare between Abdullah and Saud ibn Safid,
their Resident on the Gulf sent hundreds of sacks of rice,

ABDULLAH'S HOUSE l<)7

secretly, to Saud [the wrongful part ; ;md for such Abdullah
the \Vah;il>y abhors the Kurdish n;unc]. — I see you will not
I),- persuaded! yet I Impr that, yont life may \x> pr»-.s»-rved :
but they will not sullVr you to dwell amongst them ! you will
b;> driven from place to place." — "Thi< M-nnrd to me a good
peaceable town, and are the people so illiberal ?" — " As many
among them, as have travelled, are liberal ; but the rest no.
Now shall we go to my mother ? "

Abdullah 1* d me into an inner room, from whence we as-
cended to the floor above. He had bought this great new
(clay) house the year before, for a thousand reals, or nearly £200
sterling. The loam brickwork at Aneyza is good, and such
house-walls may stand above one hundred years. His rent, for
the same, had been (before) but fifteen reals ; house property
bring reckoned in the Arabian countries as money laid up,
and not put out to usury, — a sure and lawful possession.
The yearly fruit of 1000 dollars, lent out at Aneyza, were
120 ; the loss therefore to the merchant Abdullah, in buying
this house, was each year 100 reals. But dwelling under their
own roof, they think they enjoy some happy security of fortune :
although the walls decay soon, it will not be in their children's
time. In Abdullah's upper storey were many good chambers,
but bare to our eyes, since they have few more moveables than
the Beduw : all the husbandry of his great town-house might
have been carried on the backs of three camels ! In the Arabic
countries the use of bed-furniture is unknown ; they lie on the
floor, and the wellborn and welfaring have no more than some
thin cotton quilt spread under them, and a coverlet : I saw only
a few chests, in which they bestow their clothing. Their houses,
in this land of sunny warmth, are lighted by open loopholes made
high upon the lofty walls. But Abdullah was not so simply
housed at Bosra ; for there — in the great world's side, the Arab
merchants' halls are garnished with chairs: and the Aneyza
tdjir sat (like the rest) upon a takht or carpeted settle in his
counting-house.

He brought me to a room where I saw his old mother, sitting
on the floor ; and clad — so are all the Arabian women, only in
a calico smock dipped in indigo. She covered her old visage,
as we entered, with a veil ! Abdullah smiled to me, and looked
to see " a man of Europa " smile. " My mother, said he, I
bring thee el-hakim ; say what aileth thee, and let him see
thine eyes : " and with a gentle hand he folded down her veil.
" Oh ! said she, my head ; and all this side so aches that I
cannot sleep, my sou." Abdullah might be a man of forty ; yet
his mother was abashed, that a strange man must look upon her

168 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

old blear eyes. — We returned to the coffee room perfect friends.
" My mother, said he, is aged and suffering, and I suffer to see
her: if thou canst help us, that will be a great comfort to me."

Abdullah added, " I am even now in amazement ! that, in
such a country, you openly avow yourself to be an Englishman ;
but how may you pass even one day in safety ! You have lived
hitherto with the Beduw ; ay, but it is otherwise in the town-
ships."— " In such hazards there is nothing, I suppose, more
prudent than a wise folly." — " Then, you will not follow better
counsel ! but here you may trust in me : I will watch for you,
and warn you of any alteration in the town." I asked, " And
what of the Emir ? " — " You may also trust Zamil ; but even
Zamil cannot at all times refrain the unruly multitude."

— In the clay-built chamber of the Arabs, with casements
never closed, is a sweet dry air, as of the open field ; and the
perfume of a serene and hospitable human life, not knowing
any churlish superfluity : yet here is not whole human life, for
bye and bye we are aware of the absence of women. And their
bleak walling is an uncheerf ulness in our sight : pictures —
those gracious images that adorn our poorest dwellings, were
but of the things which are vain in the gross vision of their
Mohammedan austerity. The Arabs, who sit on the floor, see
the world more indolently than we : they must rise with a
double lifting of the body. — In a wall-niche by the fire were
Abdullah's books. We were now as brethren, and I took them
down one by one : a great tome lay uppermost. I read the
Arabic title Encyclopedia Bustdny, Beyrttt, — Bustany (born of
poor Christian folk in a Lebanon village), a printer, gazetteer,
schoolmaster, and man of letters, at Beyrut: every year he
sends forth one great volume more, but so long an enterprise
may hardly be ended. Abdullah's spectacles fell out at a place
which treated of artesian wells : he pored therein daily, and
looked to find some mean of raising water upon his thirsty acres,
without camel labour.

Abdullah enriched abroad, had lately bought a palm and
corn ground at home; and not content with the old he had
made in it a new well of eight camels' draught. I turned
another leaf and found " Burning Mountain," and a picture
of Etna. He was pleased to hear from me of the old Arab
usurpers of Sicilian soil, and that this mountain is even now
named after their words, G-ibello (Jebel). I turned to " Tele-
graph ", and Abdullah exclaimed, " Oh ! the inventions in
Europa ! what a marvellous learned subtlety must have been in
him who found it ! " When he asked further of my profession
of medicine ; I said, " I am such as your Solubba smiths —

IIUKAKI'AST WITH TIIK KMIR 169

bettor than none, where you may not find a better." — Yet
Abdullah always believed my skill to be greater than so,
becnux' m-arly all my reasonable patients were relieved; but
•ially his own mother.

Whilst we were discussing, there came in two of the foreign-
living Aneyza townsmen, a substantial citizen and his servant,
clad in the Mesopotamian guise, with head-bands, great as
turbans, of camel wool. The man had been y/ //////"/, a camel
carrier in the Irak traffic to Syria, — that is in the long trade-
way about by Aleppo ; but after the loss of the caravan, before
mentioned, having no more heart for these ventures, he sold his
camels for fields and ploughshares. To-day he was a substantial
farmer in the great new corn settlement, el-Amdra (upon the
river a little north of Bosra), and a client of Kenneyny's — one
of the principal grain merchants in the river city. The mer-
chant's dinner tray was presently borne in, and I rose to depart ;
but Abdullah made me sit down again to eat with them, though
I had been bidden in another place. — I passed this one good
day in Arabia ; and all the rest were evil because of the people's
fanaticism. At night I slept on the cottage terrace of a poor
patient, Aly's neighbour ; not liking the unswept dokan for
a lodging, and so far from friends.

At sunrise came Aly, from Zamil, to bid me to breakfast —
the bread and salt offered to the (Christian and Frankish)
stranger by the gentle philosophic Emir. We drank the morn-
ing cup, at the hearth ; then his breakfast tray was served, and
we sat down to it in the midst of the floor, the Emir, the
Nasrany and Aly: for there is no such ignoble observing of
degrees in their homely and religious life. — The breakfast fare
in Aneyza is warm girdle-bread [somewhat bitter to our taste,
yet they do not perceive the bitterness, 'which might be
because a little salt is ground with the corn,' said Abdullah] :
therewith we had dates, and a bowl of sweet (cow) butter. A
bowl of (cow) buttermilk is set by ; that the breakfasters may
drink of it after eating, when they rise to rinse the hands ; and
for this there is a metal ewer and basin. The water is poured
over the fingers ; and without more the breakfasters take leave :
the day begins.

I went to sit in my dokan, where Zamil sent me bye and
bye, by Aly, a leg of mutton out of the butchers' suk, " that I
might dine well." Mutton is good at Aneyza : and camel's
flesh is sold to poor folk. A leg of their lean desert mutton,
which might weigh five or six pounds, is sold for sixpence :
this meat, with scotches made in it and hung one day to the
ardent sun, will last good three days. Beduiiis bring live

170 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

gazelle fawns into the town ; which are often bought by citizens
to be fostered, for their children's pastime : these dearlings of
the desert were valued at eightpence.

I had not long been sitting in my dokan before one came to
put me out of it ! he cried churlishly with averted face — so that
I did not know him — to the negro Aly, who stood by, " Out !
with these things ! " The negro shouted again, " The Nasrany
is here with Zamil's knowledge : wilt thou strive with Zamil ! "
The other (who was Aly the second or executive emir) muttered
between his teeth, " Zamil quoth he, ugh ! — the dokan is mine,
and I say out ! ugh ! out of my dokan, out, out ! " But the
negro cried as loud as he, " Zamil he is Emir of this town, and
what art thou ? " — " I am Emir." The emir Aly respected my
person — to me he spoke no word, and I was ready to content
him ; the shop he said was his own. But my friends had not
done well to settle me there : the violence of the Wahaby Aly,
in contempt of the liberal Emir Zamil, would hearten the
town fanatics against the Nasrany. — This was the comedy of
the two Alyes. The white Aly spurned-to the door, and drew
the bolt; and the same day he had driven me out of the town,
but Zamil would not hear of it. I remained with my bags in
the street, and idle persons came to look on ; but the negro
Aly vehemently threatened, that ' Zamil would pluck out the
eyes and the tongue of any that molested me ! '

The hot morning hours advanced to high noon ; and when
the muethins chanted I was still sitting in the street by my
things, in the sight of the malevolent people, who again flocked
by me to the mesjid. — " Ullah ! this is one who prays not,"
quoth every passing man. After them came a lad of the town,
whose looks showed him to be of impure sinister conditions !
and bearing a long rod in his hand : therewith of his godly
zeal — that is an inhuman envy and cruelty! he had taken
upon him to beat in late-lingerers to the prayers. Now he laid
hands on the few lads, that loitered to gape upon the Nasrany,
and cried, " Go pray, go pray ! may Ullah confound you ! "
and he drove them before him. Then he threatened Aly, who
remained with me ; and the poor man, hearing God named,
could not choose but obey him. The shallow dastard stood
finally grinning upon me, — his rod was lifted ! and doubtless
he tickled in every vein with the thought of smiting a kafir, for
God's sake : but he presently vailed it again, — for are not the
Nasara reputed to be great strikers? In this time of their
prayers, some Beduins [they were perhaps Kahtan] issued from
a house near by, to load upon their kneeling camels. I went
to talk with them and hear their loghm: but Beduins in a

A NKCRO Fin 171

town are townsman, and in a journey are hostile; and v. ith
maledictions they bade me stand off, Baying, "What have we
to do with n kali:

Aly would have me speak in the matter of the dokan to
/fimil. I found /;'miil in the afternoon at his house door: and
he said, with mild voice, " We will not enter, because the
kahwa is full of Beduw " [Meteyr sheykhs, come in to consult
with tin1 town, of their riding together against the Kahtan].
We walked in his lane, and sat down under a shadowing wall,
in the dust of the street. "Have you lost the dokan? said
/a mil, well, tell Aly to find you another."

— Yesterday some Aneyza tradesmen to the nomads had been
robbed on the Boreyda road, and three camel loads of samn were
taken from them — nearly half a ton, worth 200 reals : the thieves
were Kahtan. The intruded Kahtan in el-Kasim were of the
•yda alliance; and Zamil sent a letter thither, complaining
of this injury, to Abdullah. Abdullah wrote word again, " It
was the wild Beduw : lay not their misdeed to our charge."
Zfimil now sent out thirty young men of good houses, possess-
ing theliils in the town, to scour the Nefud — [they returned
six days later to Aueyza, having seen nothing]. Zamil spoke
not much himself in the town councils : but his mind was full
of solicitude; and it was said of him in these days, that he
could not eat.

Aly found me so wretched a tenement, that my friends
exclaimed, " It is an house of the rats ! it is not habitable."
The negro answered them, He had sought up and down, but that
everyone repulsed him saying, " Shall a Nasrany harbour in my
beyt ? " The ruinous house was of a miserable old man, a patient
of mine, who demanded an excessive daily hire, although he had
received my medicines freely. Aly on the morrow persuaded a
young negro neighbour, who had a small upper chamber, empty,
to house the hakim ; promising him that the Nasrany should
cure his purblind father. — I went to lodge there : the old father
was a freed-man of YaliycCs house (afterward my friends).
The negro host was a pargetter ; it was his art to adorn the
citizens' coffee-halls with chequered daubing and white fretwork,
of gypsum. We may see, even in the rudest villages of Arabia,
the fantasy they have for whitening ; their clay casements are
commonly blanched about with jis : the white is to their sense
li<rlit and cheerfulness, as black is balefulness. [" A white day
to thee ! " is said for "good-morrow " in the border countries :
Syrian .Moslems use to whiten their clay sepulchres.— Paul cries
out, in this sense, "Thou whited walling ! "J

172 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

"Now ! quoth the young negro, when I entered his dwelling,
let them bibble-babble that will, sixty thousand bibble-bab-
blings," — because for the love of his aged father, he had received
the kafir. His narrow kahwa was presently full of town folk ;
and some of them no inconsiderable persons. It was for the
poor man's honour to serve them with coffee, of the best ; and
that day it cost a shilling, which I was careful to restore to him.
All these persons were come in to chat curiously of their maladies
with the hakim, whose counsels should cost them nothing ; they
hoped to defraud him of the medicines, and had determined in
their iniquitous hearts to keep no good will for the Nasrany
again. And I was willing to help them, in aught that I might,
without other regard.

At the next sunrise I went to breakfast with Kenneyny :
this cheerful hour is not early in that sunny climate, where the
light returns with a clear serenity ; and welf aring persons waken
to renew the daily pleasures of prayers, coffee, and the friendly
discourse of their easy lives. The meal times are commonly at
hours when the Arabian people may honestly shun the burden
of open hospitality. But the hours of the field labourers are
those of the desert : breakfast is brought out to them at high
noon, from the master's house, and they sup when the sun is
going down. Every principal household possesses a milch cow
in this town.

Each morning as I walked in the suk, some that were sick
persons' friends, drew me by the mantle, and led the hakim to
their houses ; where they brought me forth a breakfast-tray of
girdle-bread and leban. Thus I breakfasted twice or thrice
daily, whilst the wonder lasted, and felt my strength revive.
Their most diseases are of the eyes ; I saw indeed hundreds of
such patients ! in the time of my being at Aneyza. The pupils
are commonly clouded by night-chill cataract and small-pox
cataract: many lose the sight of one or even both their eyes
in childhood by this scourge ; and there is a blindness, which
comes upon them, after a cruel aching of years in the side of
the forehead. — There is nothing feasible which the wit of some
men will not stir them to attempt ; also we hear of eye-prickers
in Arabia : but the people have little hope in them. An eye-
salver with the needle, from Shuggera, had been the year before
at Aneyza. Their other common diseases are rheums and the
oasis fever, and the tdhal : I have seen the tetter among children.

— The small-pox was in the town : the malady, which had not
been seen here for seven years, spread lately from some slave
children brought up in the returning pilgrim caravan. Some
of the town caravaners, with the profit of their sales in Mecca, use

TIIK TO\VX MANN I 17.)

to buy slav<> rln'Mivn in .liddn, to sell them again in »-l-l\
or (with more advantage) in Mesopotamia. They win tl.
few reals: l)iil Aiu'\/,a lost thereby, in the time of my being
there — chiefly T think by their inoculation! — "fivo hundred"
of her free-born children! Nevertheless the infection did not
pass the Wady to Boreyda, nor to any of the Nefud villages
lying nigh about them. I was called to some of their small-pox
houses, where I found the sick lying in the dark ; the custom is
to give them no medicines, " lest they should lose their eyesight."
And thus I entered the dwellings of some of the most fanatical
citizens : niy other patients' diseases were commonly old and
radical. — Very cleanly and pleasant are the most homes in this
Arabian town, all of clay building.

The tradesmen's shops are well furnished. The common food
is cheaper at Boreyda ; at Aneyza is better cheap of " Mecca
coffee " (from el-Yemen), and of Gulf clothing. Dates, which
in Kasim are valued by weight, are very good here ; and nearly
30 pounds were sold for one real.

There is an appearance of welfare in the seemly clothing of
this townsfolk — men commonly of elated looks and a comely
liberty of carriage. They salute one another in many words,
nearly as the Beduins, with a familiar grace ; for not a few of
them, who live in distant orchard houses, come seldom into the
town. But the streets are thronged on Fridays ; when all the
townsmen, even the field labourers, come in at mid-day, to pray
in the great mesjid, and hear the koran reading and preaching :
it is as well their market day. The poorer townspeople go clad
like the Aarab; and their kerchiefs are girded with the head-cord.
These sober citizens cut the hair short — none wear the braided
side-locks of the Beduw : the richer sort (as said) have upon
their heads Fez caps, over which they loosely cast a gay kerchief;
that they gird only when they ride abroad. As for the haggu
or waist-band of slender leathern plait [it is called in Kasim
/n't;/ 1' f> or I rim'] which is worn even by princes in Hayil, and
by the (Arabian) inhabitants of Medina and Mecca, the only
wearers of it here are the hareem. The substantial townsmen
go training in black mantles of light Irak worsted: and the
young patricians will spend as much as the cloth is worth, for
a broidered collar in metal thread- work. The embroiderers are
mostly women, in whom is a skill to set forth some careless grace
of running lines, some flowery harmony in needlework — such as
we see woven in the Oriental carpets. Gentle persons in the
streets go balancing in their hands long rods which are brought
from Mecca.

174 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

Hareem are unseen, and the men's manners .are the more
gracious and untroubled : it may be their Asiatic society is
manlier, but less virile than the European. They live-on in a
pious daily assurance : and little know they of stings which be
in our unquiet emulations, and in our foreign religion. Mo-
hammed's sweet-blooded faith has redeemed them from the
superfluous study of the world, from the sour-breathing in-
hospitable wine ; and has purified their bodies from nearly
every excess of living : only they exceed here, and exceed all in
the East, in coffee. Marriage is easy from every man's youth ;
and there are no such rusty bonds in their wedlock, that any
must bear an heavy countenance. The Moslem's breast is
enlarged ; he finds few wild branches to prune of his life's vine,
— a plant supine and rich in spirit, like the Arabic language.
There is a nobility of the religious virtue among them, and
nothing stern or rugged, but the hatred of the kafir : few have
great hardness in their lives. — But the woman is in bondage,
and her heart has little or no refreshment. Women are not
seen passing by their streets, in the daytime ; but in the evening
twilight (when the men sit at coffee) you shall see many veiled
forms flitting to their gossips' houses : and they will hastily
return, through an empty suk, in the time of the last prayers,
whilst the men are praying in the mesjids.

A day or two after my being in Aneyza a young man of the
patricians came to bid me to dinner, from his father ; who was
that good man Abdullah Abd er-Eahmhn, el-Besshm, a mer-
chant at Jidda, and chief of the house of Bessam in Aneyza.
Abdullah el-Bessam and Abdullah el-Kenneyny were entire
friends, breakfasting and dining together, and going every day
to coffee in each other's houses ; and they were filastifs with
Zamil. Besides the Kenneyny I found there Sheykh Ndsir,
es-Smlry, a very swarthy man of elder years, of the Wahaby
straitness in religion ; and who was of the Aneyza merchants
at Jidda. He had lately returned — though not greatly enriched,
to live in an hired house at home ; and was partner with the
Kenneyny in buying every year a few young horses from the
Nomads, which they shipped to Bombay for sale. * * i

* * * Sheykh Nasir was of the B. Khalid families : there is
a Beduishness in them more than in the Temimies. Though
stiff in opinions, he answered me better than any man, and
with a natural frankness ; especially when I asked him of the
history and topography of these countries : and he first traced
for me, with his pen, the situation of the southern Harms, —

AT Till- ARABS1 P,<>\m> 175

t 7W/

whii-h, wit h thf rest of the vulcanic train described in this work,
before my voyage in Arabia, were not heard of in Europe. Not
IOIILC before he had rmlarkrd <mne of the honest gain of his
years of exile under tlir Red Sea climate, with two more Jidda
merchants, in a 1. -id ing to India. Tidings out of the caravan
season may hardly pass the great desert ; but he had word in
these days, by certain who came up by hap from Mecca, that
their vessel had not been heard of since her sailing ! and now
it was feared that the ship must be lost. These foreign mer-
chants at the ports do never cover their sea and fire risks by an
assurance, — such were in their eyes a deed of unbelief! In the
meanwhile sheykh Nasir bore this incertitude of God's hand
with the severe serenity of a right Moslem.

— This was the best company in the town: the dinner-tray
was set on a stool [the mess is served upon the floor in princes'
houses in Hayil]; and we sat half-kneeling about it. The
foreign merchants' meal at Aneyza is more town-like than I
had seen in Arabia : besides boiled mutton on temmn, Abdullah
had his little dishes of carrots fried in butter, and bowls of
custard messes or curded milk. — We sit at leisure at the
European board, we chat cheerfully ; but such at the Arabs'
dish would be a very inept and unreasonable behaviour! — he
were not a man but an homicide, who is not speechless in that
short battle of the teeth for a day's life of the body. And in
what sort (forgive it me, 0 thrice good friends ! in the sacra-
ment of the bread and salt,) a dog or a cat laps up his meat,
not taking breath, and is dispatched without any curiosity, and
runs after to drink ; even so do the Arabs endeavour, that they
may come to an end with speed : for in their eyes it were not
honest to linger at the dish ; whereunto other (humbler) persons
look that should eat after them. The good Bessam, to show
the European stranger the more kindness, rent morsels of his
mutton and laid them ready to my hand. — Yerhamak Ulldh,
11 The Lord be merciful unto thee;" say the town guests, every
one, in rising from dinner, with a religious mildness and
humility. Bessam himself, and his sons, held the towel to
them, without the door, whilst they washed their hands. The
company returned to their sitting before the hearth ; and his
elder son sat there already to make us coffee.

El-Kenneyny bid me come to breakfast with him on the
morrow ; and we should go out to see his orchard (which they
call here/en^//*// ' pleasure ground '). " Abdullah, quoth sheykh
Nasir, would enquire of thee how water might be raised by
some better mean than we now use at Aneyza, where a camel

176 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

walking fifteen paces draws but one bucket full ! [it may be
nearly three pails, 200 pails in an hour, 1500 to 2000 pails in
the day's labour.] And yon, a man of Europa, might be able
to help us ! for we suppose you have learned geometry ; and
may have read in books which treat of machines, that are so
wonderful in your countries." — Nasir's Wahaby malice would
sow cockle in the clean corn of our friendship, and have made
me see an interested kindness in the Kenneyny ! who answered
with an ingenuous asperity, that he desired but to ask KhaliPs
opinion. He had imagined an artesian well flowing with water
enough to irrigate some good part of Aneyza ! — I had seen to-
day a hand-cart on wheels, before a smith's forge ! a sight not
less strange in an Arabian town, than the camel in Europe ;
it was made here for the Kenneyny. The sany had fastened
the ends of his tires unhandsomely, so that they overlapped :
but his felloes, nave and spokes were very well wrought ; and
in all Nejd (for the making of suany wheels — commonly a large
yard of cross measure), there are perfect wheelwrights. Abd-
ullah's dates had been drawn home on this barrow, in the late
harvest ; and the people marvelled to see how two men might
wield the loads of two or three great camels !

The guests rise one after another and depart when the coffee
is drunk, saying, Yunaam Ullah aleyk, ' The Lord be gracious
unto thee ; ' and the host responds gently, Fi amdn illah, t (go)
in the peace of the Lord.' There are yet two summer hours of
daylight ; and the townsmen landowners will walk abroad to
breathe the freshing air, and visit their orchards.

As for the distribution of the day-time in Aneyza : the people
purchase their provision at the market stalls, soon after the
sunrising ; the shuttered shops are set open a little later, when
the tradesmen (mostly easy-living persons and landowners)
begin to arrive from breakfast. The running brokers now cry
up and down in the clothiers' street, holding such things in
their hands as are committed to them to sell for ready money, —
long guns, spears, coffee-pots, mantles, fathoms of calico, and
the like. They cry what silver is bidden ; and if any person
call them they stay to show their wares. Clothing-pieces
brought down by the caravaners from Bagdad, are often de-
livered by them to the dellals, to be sold out of hand. The
tradesmen, in days when no Beduins come in, have little
business: they sit an hour, till the hot forenoon, and then
draw their shop shutters, and go homeward ; and bye and bye
all the street will be empty. — At the mid-day ithin the towns-
men come flocking forth in all the ways, to enter the mesjids.

TIIK DAY IN ANKYZA 177

IVw ^alrsmen return from tin1 mid-day pr. the

most <u'(>(lik»> tlit- patricians,) to drink «-«,iv.-r in hi.-nds1 houses:
some, who have jenrynies in the town, withdraw then to sit in
the shadows of their palms.

At the half-a fit- moon ithin, the coffee drinkers rise from the
perfumed hearths, and go the third time a-praying to their
mesjids. r'rom the public prayers the tradesmen resort to the
suk ; their stalls are sot open, the dellals are again a-foot, and
passengers in the ba/aar. The patricians go home to dine ;
and an hour later all the shops are shut for the day. — Citizens
will wander then beyond the town walls, to return at the sun's
iroing down, when the ithin calls men a fourth time to pray in
the mesjids !

1'Yom these fourth prayers, the people go home : and this is
not an hour to visit friends ; for the masters are now sitting to
account with the field labourers, in their coffee-halls ; where
not seldom there is a warm mess of burghrol set ready for
them. J>ut husbandmen, in the far outlying palinsteads, remain
there all night ; and needing no roof, they lie down in their
mantles under the stars to sleep. Another ithin, after the sun-
setting hardly two hours, calls men to the fifth or last public
prayers (sillat cl-akhir). It is now night ; and many who are
weary remain to pray, or not to pray, in their own houses.
When they come again from the mesjids, the people have ended
the day's religion : there is yet an hour of private friendship
(but no more common assemblings) in the coffee-halls of the
patricians and foreign merchants.

- El-Kenneyny sent a poor kinsman of his, when we had
breakfasted, to accompany me to his jendyny, half a league
distant, within the furthest circuit of town walling: he being
an infirm man would follow us upon an ass. [With this kins-
man of his, >S'/< y////////, I have afterward passed the great desert
southward to the Mecca country.] We went by long clay lanes
with earthen walling, between fields and plantations, in the
cool of the morning ; but (in this bitter sun) there springs not
a green blade by the (unwatered) way side ! Their cornfields
were now stubbles ; and I saw the lately reaped harvest gathered
in great heaps, to the stamping places. * * *

' Kenneyny's palm and corn-ground might be three and

a half acres of sand soil. The farthest bay of the town wall,

which fenced him, was there fallen away, in wide breaches : and

all without the sur is sand-sea of the Nefud. The most had

;i corn-land, iii which he was now setting young palm plants

VOL. II. M

178 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

from the Wady : for every one is paid a real. He had but forty
steins of old palms, and they were of slender growth ; because of
the former " weak " (empoverished) owner's insufficient water-
ing. And such are the most small-landed men in this country ;
for they and their portions of the dust of this world are devoured
(hardly less than in Egypt and Syria,) by rich money-lenders :
that is by the long rising over their heads of an insoluble usury.
Abdullah's new double well-pit was six fathoms deep, sunk into
the underlying crust of sand -rock ; and well steyned with dry
courses of sandstone, which is hewn near Aneyza. All the
cost had been 600 reals, or nearly £120 in silver : the same for
four camels' draught would have cost 400 reals. Abdullah
valued the ground with his well at about £600, that is above
£100 an acre without the water: and this was some of their
cheaper land, lying far from the town, They have thick-grown
but light-eared harvests of wheat, sown year by year upon the
same plots ; and corn is always dear in poor Arabia.

Here four nagas — their camel cattle are black at Aneyza —
wrought incessantly : a camel may water one acre nearly from
wells of six or eight fathoms. He had opened this great well,
hoping in time to purchase some piece more of his neighbour's
ground. Abdullah, as all rich landed men, had two courses
of well camels ; the beasts draw two months till they become
lean, and they are two months at pasture in the wilderness.
Every morrow Abdullah rode hither to take the air, and oversee
his planting : and he had a thought to build himself here an
orchard house, that he might breathe the air of the Nefud, —
when he should be come again [but ah ! that was not written
in the book of life] to Aneyza. Abdullah asked, how could
I, " a man of Europa," live in the khala ? and in journeying
over so great deserts, had I never met with foot robbers,
henshilly ! The summer before this, he and some friends had
gone out with tents, to dwell nomadwise in the Nefud. Wei-
faring Aneyza citizens have canvas tents, for the yearly pil-
grimage and their often caravan passages, made like the booths
of the Beduw, that is cottage-wise, and open in front, — the best,
I can think, under this climate.

These tilled grounds so far from the town are not fenced ;
the bounds are marked by mere-stones, Abdullah looked with
a provident eye upon this parcel of land, which he planted for
his daughters' inheritance : he had purchased palms for his son
at Bosra. He would not that the men (which might be) born
of him should remain in Arabia ! and he said, with a sad pre-
sentiment, ' Oh ! that he might live over the few years of his
children's nonage.'

ABDULLAH'S n:i 179

I found here some of lii^ yotmoer I'; ^o were

'//, ol' Uagdad, and Abdullah IJessiin, t he younger,

(nephew of the elder Abdallah el-J$>-.^;im) ; ;i,nd a negro <•
panion of theirs, ,S'/fc ///•//. ///// J //////, a li-tt«-p-d slu-ykh or »•'
in the religion. After salaams they all held me out. their
forearms, - -that the hakim might lain- knowledge of their
pulses! llaniedand Abdullah, unlike t heir worthiness of soul,
were slender growths: their blood flowed in feeble streams,
as their old spent fathers, and the air of great towns, had
given them life. Ibn Ayith, of an (ox-like; African complexion,
showed a pensive countenance, whilst I held his destiny in my
hands! — and r.<|iiired in a small negro voice, * What did I
deem of his remiss health ? ' The poor scholar believed himself
to be always ailing; though his was no lean and discoloured
vi<age ! nor the long neck, narrow breast, and pithless members
of those chop-fallen men that live in the twilight of human life,
growing only, since their pickerel youth, in their pike's heads,
to die later in the world's cold. — The negro litterate was a new
man from this day, wherein he heard the hakim's absolution ;
and carried himself upright among his friends (thus they
laughed to me), whereas he had drooped formerly. And Ibn
Ayith was no pedant fanatic ; but daily conversing with the
foreign merchants, he had grown up liberal minded. Poor, he
had not travelled, saving that — as all the religious Nejdians,
not day-labourers — he had ridden once on pilgrimage (with
his bountiful friends, who had entertained him) to Mecca ;
" And if I were in thy company, quoth he, I would show thee
all the historical places." His toward youth had been fostered
in learning, by charitable sheykhs ; and they at this day main-
tained his scholar's leisure. He was now father of a family ;
but besides the house wherein he dwelt, he had no worldly pos-
sessions. There was ever room for him at Abdullah el-Bessam's
dish ; and he was ofttimes the good man's scrivener, for
Abdullah was less clerk than honourable merchant ; and it is
the beginning of their school wisdom to write handsomely.
But in Ibn Ayith was no subject behaviour ; I have heard him,
with a manly roughness, say the kind Abdullah nay! to his
beard. There is a pleasant civil liberty in Aneyza, and no lofty
looks of their natural rulers in the town ; but many a poor man
(in his anger) will contradict, to the face, and rail at the long-
suffering prudence of Zamil ! — saying, Md tfak Miry)-, there is
not good in thee.

\Yhen I came again, it was noon, the streets were empty, and
the shops shut: the ithin sounded, and the people came troop-
ing by to the mesjids. An old Ateyba sheykh passed lateward,

180 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

— he was in the town with some of his marketing tribesmen ;
and hearing I was the hakim, he called to me, ' He would
have a medicine for the riliS One answered, " It might cost
thee a real." — "And what though this medicine cost a real, 0
townling (hathery), if I have the silver ! " There came also
some lingering truants, who stayed to smile at the loud and
sudden-tongued old Beduwy ; and a merry fellow asked, amidst
their laughter, were he well with his wives? "Nay, cries the
old heart, and I would, billah, that the hareem had not cause.
— Oho ! have patience there ! " (because some zealots thrust on
him). — " Heardest not thou the ithin ? go pray ! " — " Ay, ay, I
heard it, Ullah send you sorrow ! am I not talking with this
mudowwy ? — well, I am coming presently." — A zealot woman
went by us : the squalid creature stepped to the Beduin sheykh,
and drew him by the mantle. " To the prayer ! cries she, old
devil-sick Beduwy ; thou to stand here whilst the people pray !
— and is it to talk with this misbelieving person ? " — " Akhs !
do away thy hands ! let me go, woman ! — I tell thee I have said
my prayers." Though he cried akhs-akhs I she held him by the
cloth ; and he durst not resist her : yet he said to me, " 0 thou
the mudowwy ! where is thy remedy for the rheums ? — a wild
fire on this woman ! that will not let me speak." I bade him
return after prayers ; and the sheykh hearing some young
children chide with "Warak, warak ! why goest thou nob in
to pray ? " he called to me as he was going, " 0 thou ! resist
them not, but do as they do ; when a man is come to another
country, let him observe the usage and not strive — that will be
best for thee, and were it only to live in peace with them."
Now the stripling with the rod was upon us! — the kestrel would
have laid hands on the sheykhly father of the desert. "Oh !
hold, and I go," quoth he, and they drove him before them.

My medical practice was in good credit. Each daybreak a
flock of miserable persons waited for the hakim, on the small
terrace of my host (before they went to their labour): they impor-
tuned me for their sore eyes ; and all might freely use my eye
washes. In that there commonly arrived some friendly messenger,
to call the stranger to breakfast ; and I left my patients lying on
their backs, with smarting eyeballs. The poorer citizens are
many, in the general welfare of Aneyza. Such are the field
labourers and well drivers, who receive an insufficient monthly
wage. The impotent, and the forsaken in age, are destitute
indeed ; they must go a-begging through the town. I sometimes
met with a tottering and deadly crew in the still streets before
midday ; old calamitous widows, childless aged men, indigent

TIIK rOUNQ MKI;< n U

road iriveB, ami tin- inis-iiap«'N and di of step-

ilaiin- Nahnvlliat h;ul n« >no to relieve t hem. They OT66p AbfOM
6 in the world, and must knock from door to door, to
know if the Lord will send them any good ; and cry lamentably
7// /•/-/,•(//•//,/ / '() ye of this bountiful household.' But I
seldom saw the cheerful hand of bounty which beckoned to
them or opened. One morrow when I went to visit the Emir the
mesquins were crouching and shuffling at his door; and XAmiPs
son Abdullah came out with somewhat to give them: but I saw
his dole was less than his outstretched hand full of dates ! " Go
further! and here is for you," quoth the young niggard: he
pushed the mesquins and made them turn their backs.

I passed some pleasant evenings in the kahwas of the young
friends and neighbours Hamed and Abdullah ; and they called
in Ibn Ayith, who entertained me with discourse of the Arabic
letters. Hamed regaled us with Bagdad nargilies, and Abdullah
made a sugared cooling drink of tdmr el-Hind (tamarind). To
Abdullah's kahwa, in the daytime, resorted the best company in
the town, — such were the honourable young Bessam's cheerful
popular manners. His mortar rang out like a bell of hospitality,
when he prepared coffee. The Aneyza mortar is a little saucer-
like hollow in a marble block great as a font-stone : a well-
ringing mortar is much esteemed' among them. Their great
coffee-mortar blocks are hewn not many hours from the town
eastward (near el-Mith'nib, toward J. Tueyk). An ell long is
every liberal man's pestle of marble in Aneyza : it is smitten in
rhythm (and that we hear at all the coffee-hearths of the Arabs).
A jealous or miserable householder, who would not have many
pressing in to drink with him, must muffle the musical note of
his marble or knelling brasswork.

These were the best younger spirits of the (foreign) merchant
houses in the town : they were readers in the Encyclopaedia, and
of the spirituous poets of the Arabian antiquity. Abdullah,
when the last of his evening friends had departed, sitting at his
petroleum lamp, and forgetting the wife of his youth, would
pore on his books and feed his gentle spirit almost till the day
appearing. Hamed, bred at Bagdad, was incredulous of the
world old and new ; but he leaned to the new studies. These
young merchants sought counsels in medicine, and would learn
of me some Frankish words, and our alphabet, — and this because
their sea carriage is in the hands of European shippers. A few
of these Arabians, dwelling in the trade ports, have learned to
endorse their names upon Frankish bills which come to their
hands, in Roman letters. Abdullah el-Bessam's eldest son — he
was now in India, and a few more, had learned to read and to

182 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

speak too in English : yet that was, I can think, but lamely.
Others, as the Kenneyny, who have lived in Bombay, can speak
the Hindostani. Hamed wrote from my lips (in his Arabic
letters) a long table of English words, — such as he thought
might serve him in his Gulf passages. His father dwelt, since
thirty years, in Bagdad ; and had never revisited Aneyza : —
in which time the town is so increased, that one coming again
after a long absence might hardly, they say, remember himself
there. El-Kenneyny told me that Aneyza was now nearly
double of the town fifteen years ago; and he thought the
inhabitants must be to-day 15,000 !

•My friends saw me a barefoot hakim, in rent clothing, as I
was come-in from the khala, and had escaped out of Boreyda.
The younger Abdullah Bessam sent me sandals, and they would
have put a long wand in niy hand ; but I answered them, " He
is not poor who hath no need : my poverty is honourable."
Kenneyny said to me on a morrow, when we were alone (and
for the more kindness finding a Frankish word), " Mussu
Khalil, if you lack money — were it an hundred or two hundred
reals, you may have this here of me : " but he knew not all my
necessity, imagining that I went poorly for a disguise. I gave
thanks for his generous words ; but which were thenceforth in
my ears as if they had never been uttered. I heard also, that
the good Bessam had taken upon himself to send me forward,
to what part I would. I was often bidden to his house, and
seldom to Kenneyny's, who (a new man) dreaded over-much
the crabbed speech of his Wahaby townspeople. The good
Bessam, as oft as he met with me, invited the stranger,
benignly, to breakfast on the morrow : and at breakfast he bid
me dine the same day with him, — an humanity which was much
to thank God for, in these extremities. * * *

OHAPTBB IX

L1M VZA

OM: .if ilu-sc mornings word was brought to the town, that
I'x'duhis had fallen upon liar in the Wady, and carried

away their asses : and in the next halt' hour I saw more than
a hundred of the young townsmen hasten-by armed to the
Boreyda gate. The poorer sort ran foremost on foot, with long
lances ; and the well-faring trotted after upon theluls with their
backriders. But an hour had passed ; and the light-footed
robbers were already two or three leagues distant !

There were yet rumours of warfare with Boreyda and the
Kalitan. Were it war between the towns, Hasan and the
Boreydians (less in arms and fewer in number) durst not
adventure to meet the men of Aneyza in the Nefiid ; but would
shelter themselves within their (span-thick) clay wall, leaving
their fields and plantations in the power of the enemy, — as it
has happened before-time. The adversaries, being neighbours,
will no more than devour their fruits, whilst the orchards
languish un watered : they are not foreign enemies likely to
lop the heads of the palms, whereby they should be ruined for
many years. — This did Ibn Saud's host in the warfare with
Aneyza ; they destroyed the palms in the Wady : so pleasant
is the sweet pith-wood to all the Arabians, and they desire to
eat of it with a childish greediness.

Kahtan tribesmen were suffered to come marketing to

Aneyza ; till a hubt of theirs returning one evening with loaded

camels, and finding some town children not far from the

, in the Nefud, that were driving home their asses, and an

with them, took the beasts and let the children go : yet

they carried away the negro, — and he was a slave of Tamil's !

A savage tiding was brought in from the north ; and all

was moved by it, for the persons were well known to

th.-m. A great camp of Mt-1 1>, *//,/;//,-, or " friends-of-

184 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

trust to the town and Zamil ", (if any of the truthless nomads
can be trusty !) had been set upon at four days' distance from
hence by a strong ghrazzu of Kahtan, — for the pastures of
Kasim, their capital enemies. Leader of the raid was that
Hayzan who, not regarding the rites of hospitality, had
threatened me at Hayil. The nomads (fugitive foemenin every
other cause), will fight to "the dark death " for their pastures
and waters. The Meteyr were surprised in their tents and
outnumbered ; and the Kahtan killed some of them. The rest
saved themselves by flight, and their milch camels ; leaving
the slow-footed flocks, with the booths, and their household
stuff in the power of their enemies ; who not regarding the
religion of the desert pierced even women with their lances,
and stripped them, and cut the wezands of three or four young
children ! Among the fallen of Meteyr was a principal sheykh
well known at Aneyza. Hayzan had borne him through with
his romh !

Those Aarab now withdrew towards Aneyza : where their
sheykhs found the townsmen of a mind to partake with them,
to rid the country of the common pestilence. In their gene-
alogies, el-Meteyr, Ishmaelites, are accounted in the descents
from Keys, and from Anrndr, and RvJbia : Rubia, Anmar,
Muthur, and Eyad are brethren ; and Rubia is father of Wayil,
patriarch of the Annezy. Meteyr are of old Ahl Gibly : and
their home is in the great Harra which lies between the
Harameyn, yet occupied by their tribesmen. Their ancient
villages in that country, upon the Derb es-Slierky or east
Haj-road to Mecca, are El-Fer6ya, Hdthi, Sfeyna, es-Siverguh
in the borders of the Harrat el-Kissliub ; and Jfajjir : but the
most villagers of the Swergieh valley are at this day ashraf, or
of the " eminent " blood of the Neby. The Meteyr are now in
part Ahl es-Shemal : for every summer these nomads journey
upward to pasture their cattle in the northern wilderness : their
borders are reckoned nearly to Kuweyt and Bosra ; and they
are next in the North to the northern Shammar. Neither are
tributary, but " friendly Aarab," to Ibn Rashid. The desert
marches of the Meteyr are thus almost 200 leagues over ! [They
are in multitude (among the middle Arabian tribes) next after
the great Beduin nation 'Ateyba, and may be almost 5000
souls.] Their tents were more than two hundred in el-Kasim,
at this time. Each year they visit Aneyza ; and Zamil bestows
a load or two of dates upon their great sheykh, that the town
caravans may pass by them, unhindered.

Other Beduin tribesmen resorting to Aneyza are the 'Ateyldn
(also reckoned to the line of Keys) : neither the Meteyr nor

TIIK rrSTODY OF TIIK IM'Iil.h PBJ

were friendly with lluivyda. 'I ba marches

•ill that high wildernr .--, an hundred leagues over, which
Lies between el-Kasim in tin- north, and the Mecca country : in
that vast dii-a, of the best desert pastures, there is no settle-
ment! The 'Atcyl>;i, one of the greatest of Arabian tribes,
may In- nearly 6000 souls; they are of more stable mind than
the most Beduw ; and have br.-n allies (as said), in every for-
tune, of Abdullah ibn Sand. There is less fanaticism in their
religion than moderation : they dwell between the AY alia l>y and
the Harani ; and boast themselves hereditary friends of flu-
Sherifs of Mecca. Zamil was all for quietness and p«-ar»\ in
which is the welfare of human life, and God is worshipped;
but were it warfare, in his conduct, the people of Aneyza are
confident. Now he sent out an hundred theliil riders of the
citizens, in two bands, to scour the Nefud ; and set over them
the son of the Emir Aly, YaJu/a ; a manly young man, but like
his father of the strait \Yahaby understanding.

I saw a Kahtany arrested in the street ; the man had come
marketing to Aneyza, bat being known by his speech, the by-
standers laid hands on his thelul. Some would have drawn
him from the saddle ; and an Arab overpowered will [his feline
and chameleon nature] make no resistance, for that should en-
danger him. " Come thou with us afore Zamil," cried they.
" Well, he answered, I am with you." They discharged his
camel and tied up the beast's knee : the salesmen in the next
shops sat on civilly incurious of this adventure. — At Hayil, in
like case, or at Boreyda all had been done by men of the Emir's
band, with a tyrannous clamour ; but here is a free township,
where the custody of the public peace is left in the hands of all
the citizens. — As for the Kahtan Zamil had not yet proclaimed
them enemies of Aneyza ; and nothing was alleged against
this Beduwy. They bound him : but the righteous Emir gave
judgment to let the man go.

Persons accused of crimes at Aneyza (where is no prison),
are bound, until the next sitting of the Emir. Kenneyny told
me there had been in his time but one capital punishment, —
this was fifteen years ago. The offender was a woman, sister
of Mufarrij ! that worthy man whom we have seen steward of
the prince's public hall at Hayil : it was after this misfortune
to his house that he left Aneyza to seek some foreign service.
— She had enticed to her yard a little maiden, the only daughter
of a wealthy family, her neighbours ; and there she smothered
the child for the (golden) ornaments of her pretty head, and
buried the innocent body. The bereaved father sought* to a

186 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

soothsayer, — in the time of whose " reading "' they suppose
that the belly of the guilty person should swell. The diviner
led on to the woman's house ; and showing a place he bade
them dig ! — There they took up the little corpse ! and it was
borne to the burial.

— The woman was brought forth to suffer, before the session
of the people and elders (musheyikh) assembled with the execu-
tive Emir. — In these Arabian towns, the manslayer is bound by
the sergeants of the Emir, and delivered to the kindred of the
slain, to be dealt with at their list. — Aly bade the father, "Rise
up and slay that wicked woman, the murderess of his child."
But he who was a religious elder (muttowwa), and a mild and
godly person, responded, " My little daughter is gone to the
mercy of Ullah ; although I slay the woman, yet may not this
bring again the life of my .child ! — suffer, Sir, that I spare her :
she that is gone, is gone." Aly : " But her crime cannot re-
main unpunished, for that were of too perilous example in the
town ! Strike thou ! I say, and kill her." — Then the muttowwa
drew a sword and slew her! Common misdoers and thieves
are beaten with palm-leaf rods that are to be green and not in
the dry, which (they say) would break fell and bones. There
is no cutting off the hand at Aneyza ; but any hardened felon is
cast out of the township.

After this Zamil sent his message to the sheykhs of Kahtan
in the desert, ' that would they now restore all which had been
reaved by their tribesmen, they might return into friendship :
and if no, he pronounced them adversaries.' Having thus dis-
charged their consciences, these (civil) townsfolk think they
may commit their cause to the arbitrage of Ullah, and their
hands shall be clean from blood : and (in general) they take no
booty from their enemies ! for they say " it were unlawful, "-
notwithstanding, I have known to my hurt, that there are many
sly thieves in their town ! But if a poor man in an expedition
bestow some small thing in his saddle-bag, it is indulged, so
that it do not appear openly. — And thus, having nothing to
gain, the people of Aneyza only take arms to defend their
liberties.

One day when I went to visit Zamil, I found a great silent
assembly in his coffee-hall : forty of the townspeople were
sitting round by the walls. Then there came in an old man
who was sheykh of the religion ; and my neighbour told me in
my ear, they were here for a Friday afternoon lecture ! Coffee
was served round ; and they all drank out of the same cups.

MITTOWWA I'RKUlf \< : \I\-T TH K NASRANY 1*7

Arabs spare n >t to eat or drink out of the same vessel with
any man. And Mohammed could not imagine in his ( Arabian)
religion, to forbid this earthly communion of the human life:
but indeed their incurious custom of all hands dipping in one
dish, and all lips kissing in one cup, is laudable rather than
very wholesome.

The Imam's mind was somewhat wasted by the desolate koran
reading. I heard in his school discourse DO word which sounded
to moral edification ! He said finally — looking towards me !
" And to speak of Aysa bin Miriam, — Jesu was of a truth a
er of Ullah : but the Nasara walk not in the way of
Jesu, — they bo gone aside, in the perversity of their minds,
unto idolatry." And so rising mildly, all the people rose ; and
every one went to take his sandals.

The townspeople tolerated me hitherto, — it was Zamil's will.
But the Muttowwa, or public ministers of the religion, from
the first, stood contrary ; and this Imam (a hale and venerable
elder of threescore years and ten) had stirred the people, in his
Friday noon preaching, in the great mesjid, against the Nasrany.
' It was, he said, of evil example, that certain principal persons
favoured a misbelieving stranger : might they not in so doing
provoke the Lord to anger? and all might see that the season-
able rain was withheld ! ' — Cold is the outlaw's life ; and I
marked with a natural constraint of heart, an alienation of the
street faces, a daily standing off of the faint-hearted, and of
certain my seeming friends. I heard it chiefly alleged against
me, that I greeted with Salaam aleyk ; which they will have
to be a salutation of God's people only — the Moslemin. El-
Kenneyny, Bessam, Zamil were not spirits to be moved by the
words of a dull man in a pulpit ; in whom was but the (implac-
able) wisdom of the Wahabies of fifty years ago. I noted some
alteration in es-Smiry ; and, among my younger friends, in the
young Abdullah Bessam, whose nigh kindred were of the Nejd
straitness and intolerance. There was a strife in his single mind,
betwixt his hospitable human fellowship, and the duty he owed
unto God and the religion : and when he found me alone he
asked, " Wellah Khalil, do the Nasara hold thus and thus?
contrary to the faith of Islam ! " —Not so Hamed es-Safy, the
young Bagdady ; who was weaiy of the tedious Nejd religion :
sometimes ere the ithin sounded he shut his outer door ; but if
I knocked it was opened (to " el-docteur"), when he heard ray
voice. These Aneyza merchant friends commonly made tea
when the Engleysy arrived : they had learned abroad to drink
it in the Persian manner. * * *

188 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

* * * Though there is not a man of medicine in Nejd, yet
some modest leech may be found : and I was called to another
Bessam household to meet one who was of this town. That
Bessam, a burly body, was the most travelled of the foreign
merchants : by railway he had sped through the breadth of
India ; he had dwelt in the land, and in his mouth was the
vulgar Hindostany. But no travel in other nations could amend
his wooden head ; and like a tub which is shipped round the
world he was come home never the better : there is no trans-
muting such metals ! His wit was thin ; and he had weakly
thriven in the world. The salver sat at the Bessam's coffee
hearth; awaiting me, with the respectable countenance of a
village schoolmaster. — His little skill, he said with humility, he
had gathered of reading in his few books ; and those were hard
to come by. He asked me many simple questions ; and bowed
the head to all my answers ; and, glad in his heart to find me
friendly, the poor man seemed to wonder that the learning of
foreign professors were not more dark, and unattainable !

In these last days the honest soul had inoculated all the
children in the town : he acknowledged, * that there die many
thus ! — but he had read, that in the cow-pox inoculation [el-
'athab] of the Nasara there die not any ' ! After hearing me
he said, he would watch, mornings and evenings, at some of the
town gates, when the kine are driven forth or would be return-
ing from pasture ; if haply he might find the pocks on some of
their udders. [Already Amm Mohammed had looked for it in
vain, at Kheybar.] — I counselled the sheykhs to send this worthy
man to the north, to learn the art for the public good ; and so
he might vaccinate in these parts of Nejd. Worn as I was, I prof-
fered myself to ride to Bagdad, if they would find me the thelul,
and return with the vaccine matter. But no desire nor hope of
common advantage to come can move or unite Arabians : neither
love they too well that safeguarding human forethought, which
savours to them of untrust in an heavenly Providence. Their
religion encourages them to seek medicines, — which God has
created in the earth to the service of man ; but they may not
flee from the pestilence. Certain of the foreign merchants have
sometimes brought home the lymph, — so did Abdullah el-
Bessam, the last year ; yet this hardly passes beyond the walls
of their houses. — I heard a new word in that stolid Bessam's
mouth (and perhaps he fetched it from India), " What dost
thou, quoth he, in a land where is only dicinat el-MoJiammedia ,
Mohammedan religion ? whereas they use to say din el-Islam"
— India, el-Kenneyny called, " A great spectacle of religions ! "

Amm Mohammed at Kheybar and the Beduw have told me,

Till; N \si; \\Y IN NEED OF LODGING 189

there LB a disease in camels like that which they underst

from in.- t«. lie the OOW-pOZ. — The small-pox B] -t. One

<lay at nn.»n I found my young negro hostess son •• -she had

linuiglit-in her child ik, from playing in the G& : I

•md bye their other babe sickened. — J would not. remain in
that narrow lodging to breathe an infected air: but, I'-aving
there my tilings, I passed the next days in the streets: ami
often when the night. fell I was yet fasting, and had not where
to sleep. I '.lit 1 thought, that to be overtaken here by the
disea-e, would exceed all present evils. None offered to receive
me into their houses; therefore beating in the evening — com-
monly they knock with an idle rhythm — at the rude door of
some poor patient, upon whom I had In-stowed medicines, and
hearing responded from within, >//////"/, 'approach ' ! I entered :
and a-ked leave to lie down on their cottage floor [of d

d sand] to sleep. The Kenneyny would not be marked to
harbour a Nasrany : to Bessam I had not revealed my distress.
And somewhat I reserved of these Arabian friends' kindness;
that 1 might take up all, in any extreme need.

The deep sanded (open) terrace roof of the mesjid, by my old
dokan. was a sleeping place for strangers in the town ; but what
sanctity of the house of prayer would defend me slumbering ?
for with the sword also worship they Ullah. — But now I found
some relief, where I looked not for it : there was a man who used
my medicines, of few words, sharp-set looks and painted eyes,
but the son of a good mother, — a widow woman, who held a
small shop of all wares, where I sometimes bought bread. He
wa- a salesman in the clothiers' siik, and of those few, beside
the Emirs and their sons, who carried a sword in Aneyza; for
he was an officer of /amiPs. He said to me, "I am sorry,
Khalil, to see thee without lodging ; there is an empty house
nigh us, and shall we go to see it ? " — Though 1 found it to be
an unswept clay chamber or two ; I went the same day to lodge
there : and they were to me good neighbours. Every morrow
his mother brought me girdle-bread with a little whey and
butter, and filled my water-skin : at the sunsetting (when she
knew that commonly — my incurable obliviousness — I had pro-
vided nothing; and now the suk was shut), she had some
wheaten mess ready for the stranger in her house, for little
money ; and for part she would receive no payment! it must
have been secretly from Xamil. This aged woman sat before
me open-faced, and she treated me as her son : hers was the
only town-woman's face that I have seen in middle Nejd, —
where only maiden children are not veiled.

190 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

* * * My friends, when I enquired of the antiquity of the
country, spoke to me of a ruined site el-lEyarieli, a little distance
northward upon this side of the W. er-Eummah : and Kenneyny
said " We can take horses and ride thither." I went one
morning afterward with Hamud Assafy to borrow horses of a
certain horse-broker Abdullah, surnamed [and thus they name
every Abdullah, although he have no child] Abu Nejm: Abu
Nejm was a horse-broker for the Indian market. There is no
breeding or sale of horses at Boreyda or Aneyza, nor any town
in Nejd ; but the horse-brokers take up young stallions in the
Aarab tribes, which — unless it be some of not common excellence,
are of no great price among them. Kenneyny would ride out to
meet with us, from another horse-yard, which was nigh his own
plantation.

We found Abu Nejm's few sale horses, with other horses
which he fed on some of his- friends' account, in a field among
the last palms north of the town. Two stallions feed head to
head at a square clay bin ; and each horse is tethered by an hind
foot to a peg driven in the ground. Their fodder is green vetches
(jet) : and this is their diet since they were brought in lean from
the desert, through the summer weeks ; until the time when the
the Monsoon blows in the Indian seas. Then the broker's horse-
droves pass the long northern wilderness, with camels, bearing
their water, in seventeen marches to Kuwey t ; where they are
shipped for Bombay.

An European had smiled to see in this Arab's countenance
the lively impression of his dealing in horses ! Abu Nejm, who
lent me a horse, would ride in our company. Our saddles were
pads without stirrups, for — like the Beduins, they use none
here : yet these townsmen ride with the sharp bit of the border
lands ; whereas the nomad horsemen mount without bit or rein,
and sit upon their mares, as they sit on their dromedaries (that
is somewhat rawly), and with a halter only. — I have never heard
a horseman commended among Beduins for his fair riding,
though certain sheykhs are praised as spearsmen. Abu Nejm
went not himself to India ; and it was unknown to him that any
Nasrany could ride : he called to me therefore, to hold fast to
the pad-brim, and wrap the other hand in the horse's mane.
Bye and bye I made my horse bound under me, and giving rein
let him try his mettle over the sand-billows of the Nefud, —
" Ullah ! is the hakim khayy&l, a horseman ? " exclaimed the
worthy man.

We rode by a threshing-ground ; and I saw a team of well-
camels driven in a row with ten kine and an ass inwardly (all
the cattle of that homestead), about a stake, and treading knee-

MJ.UUAN IKH: 101

deep upon the bruised r:>rp->t ;ilks. In t ha' :nany

.'nit-hills; and drew bridle to consider the labour of certain
indigent h.-ireem that were sitting beside them. — I saw
ciiiniets' last confusion (which they suffered as robbers), — their
hill-colonies subverted, and caught up in the women's meal-
sieves ! that (careful only of their desolate living) tossed sky-
high the pismire nation, and mingled people and i/inx/n-i/ikh in
a homicide ruin of sand and grain. — And each needy wife had
already some handfuls laid up in her spread kerchief, of this
gleaning corn.

We see a long high platform of sand-rock, Mergab er-R&fa,
upon this side of the town. There stone is hewed and squared
for well building, and even for gate-posts, in Aneyza. — Kenneyny
came riding to meet us ! and now we fell into an hollow ancient
way through the Nefud leading to the 'Eyarieh ; and my com-
panions said, there lies such another between el-'Eyarieh and
cl-Owshazfch ; that is likewise an ancient town site. How may
these impressions abide in unstable sand ? — So far as I have seen
there is little wind in these countries.

Abdullah sat upon a beautiful young stallion of noble blood,
that went sidling proudly under his fair handling : and seeing the
stranger's eyes fixed upon his horse, " Ay, quoth my friend, this
one is good in all." Kenneyny, who with Sheykh Nasir shipped
three or four young Arabian horses every year to Bombay, told
me that by some they gain ; but another horse may be valued
there so low, that they have less by the sale-money than the first
cost and expenses. Abu Nejm told us his winning or losing was
' as it pleased Ullah : the more whiles he gained, but sometimes
no.' They buy the young desert horses in the winter time,
that ere the next shipping season they may be grown in flesh,
and strong ; and inured by the oasis' diet of sappy vetches, to
the green climate of India.

Between the wealthy ignorance of foreign buyers, and the
Asiatic flattery of the Nejders of the Arab stables in Bombay,
a distinction has been invented of Aneyza and Nejd horses ! —
as well might we distinguish between London and Middlesex
pheasants. We have seen that the sale-horses are collected by
town dealers, min el-Aarab, from the nomad tribes ; and since
there are few horses in the vast Arabian marches, they are oft-
times fetched from great distances. I have found "Aneyza"
horses in the Bombay stables which were foaled in el- Yemen. —
Perhaps we may understand by Aneyza horses, the horses of
Kasim dealers [of Aneyza and Boreyda] ; and by Xcjd horses,
the Jebel horses, or those sent to Bombay from Ibn Rashid's
country. I heard that a Boreyda broker's horse-troop had been

192 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

sent out a few days before my coming thither. — 'Boreyda is a
town and small Arabian state ; the Emir governs the neighbour
villages, but is not obeyed in the desert. It is likely therefore
that the Aneyza horse-coursers' traffic may be the more con-
siderable. [The chief of the best Bombay stable is from
Shuggera in el-Weshm.]

As for the northern or " Gulf " horses, bred in the nomad
diras upon the river countries — although of good stature and
swifter, they are not esteemed by the inner Arabians. Their
flesh being only " of greenness and water " they could not
endure in the sun-stricken languishing country. Their own
daughters-of-the-desert, albe they less fairly shaped, are, in the
same strains, worth five of the other. — Even the sale-horses are
not curried under the pure Arabian climate : they learn first to
stand under the strigil in India. Hollow-necked, as the camel,
are the Arabian horses : the lofty neck of our thick -blooded
horses were a deformity in the eyes of all Arabs. The desert
horses, nurtured in a droughty wilderness of hot plain lands
beset with small mountains, are not leapers, but very sure of
foot to climb in rocky ground. They are good weight carriers:
I have heard nomads boast that their mares ' could carry four
men '. The Arabians believe faithfully that Ullah created the
horse-kind in their soil : el-asl, the root or spring of the horse
is, they say, " in the land of the Aarab ". Even Kenneyny
was of this superstitious opinion ; although the horse can live
only of man's hand in the droughty khala. [Hummaky, a
mare, is a word often used in el-Kasim : Salih el-Rasheyd
tells me they may say ghrog for a horse ; but that is seldom
heard.]

We rode three miles and came upon a hill of hard loam, over-
looking the Wady er-Rummah, which might be there two miles
over. In the further side appear a few outlying palm planta-
tions and granges : but that air Vreeds fever and the water is
brackish, and they are tilled only by negro husbandmen. All
the nigh valley grounds were white with subbakha : in the midst
of the Wady is much good loam, grown up with desert bushes
and tamarisks; but it cannot be husbanded because the ground-
water — there at the depth of ten feet — is saline and sterile.
Below us I saw an enclosure of palms with plots of vetches and
stubbles, and a clay cabin or two ; which were sheykh Nasir's.
Here the shallow Rummah bottom reaches north-eastward and
almost enfolds Aneyza: at ten hours' distance, or one easy
theliil journey, lies a great rautha, Ziglireybieli, with corn
grounds, which are flooded with seyl-water in the winter rains :
there is a salt bed, where salt is digged for Aueyza.

KL'KYAIMKII

Tin- Wady descending thrOtlgl] the north'-m wildrrne-s [which
lies wast e for hundreds of miles, without settlement] isdamm-d
in a place called ctli-Tlnni/nit-; that is a thelul journey or
haps fifty miles distant from A ney/a, by great dimes of
which are grown up, they say, in this age. From thence the
hollow Wady ground — wherein is the path of the northern cara-
vans— is named rl-lhiti/i ; and passengers ride by the ruined
sit-'s of two or three villages : there are few wells by the way,
and not much water in them. That vast wilderness was anciently
of the B. Taamir. The Wady banks are often cliffs of clay and
gravel ; and from cliff to cliff the valley may be commonly an
hour (nearly throe miles) over, said Kenneyny. In the Nefud
plain of Ka^im, the course of the great Wady is sometimes hardly
to be discerned by the eyes of strangers.

A few journeying together will not adventure to hold the
valley way : they ride then, not far off, in the desert. All the
winding length of the Wady er-llumniah is, according to the
vulgar opinion, forty-five days or camel marches (that were
almost a thousand miles) : it lies through a land-breadth,
measured from the heads in the Harrat Kheybar to the outgoing
near Bosra, of nearly five hundred miles. — What can we think
of this great valley-ground, in a rainless land ? When the Wady
is in flood — that is hardly twice or thrice in a century, the valley
flows down as a river. The streaming tide is large ; and where
not straitened may be forded, they say, by a dromedary rider.
No man of my time of life had seen the seyl ; but the elder
generation saw it forty years before, in a season when uncommon
rains had fallen in all the high country toward Kheybar. The
flood that passed Aneyza, being locked by the mole of sand at
eth-Thueyrdt, rose backward and became a wash, which was here
at the 'Eyarieh two miles wide. And then was seen in Nejd
the new spectacle of a lake indeed ! — there might be nigh an
hundred miles of standing water ; which remained two years and
was the repair of all wandering wings of water-fowl not known
heretofore, nor had their cries been heard in the air of these
desert countries. After a seyling of the great valley the water
nses in the wells at Boreyda and Aneyza ; and this continues for
a year or more.

We found upon this higher ground potsherds and broken
glass — as in all ruined sites of ancient Arabia, and a few
building stones, and bricks: but how far are they now from
the.-e arts of old settled countries in Nejd! — This is the site
el-'Kyari'-li or J/< //:/'/ '#/////•; where they see * the plots of three
or four ancient villages and a space of old inhabited soil greater
than Aneyza ' : they say, " It is better than the situation of the

?OL, II." N

194 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

(new) town." We dismounted, and Abdullah' began to say,
"Wellah, the Arabs (of our time) are degenerate from the
ancients, in all ! — we see them live by inheriting their labours "
(deep wells in the deserts and other public works) !

-The sword, they say, of Khdlid bin-Walid [that new
Joshua of Islam, in the days of Omar] devoured idolatrous
'Eyarieh, a town of B. Temim. The like is reported of
Owshazieh, whose site is three hours eastward : there are now
some palm-grounds and orchard houses of Aneyza. 'Eyfar and
Owshdz, in the Semitic tradition, are "brethren". — "It is re-
membered in the old poets of those B. Temim citizens (quoth
my erudite companions) that they had much cattle ; and in the
spring-time were wont to wander with their flocks and camels
in the Nefud, and dwell in booths like the nomads." — This
is that we have seen in Edom and Moab where, from the enter-
ing of the spring, the villagers are tent-dwellers in the wilder-
ness about them, — for the summering of their, cattle : I have
seen poor families in Gilead — which had no tent-cloth — dwelling
under great oaks! the leafy pavilions are a covert from the
heat by day, and from the nightly dews. Their flocks were
driven-in toward the sun-setting, and lay down round about
them.

Only the soil remains of the town of 'Eyar : what were the
lives of those old generations more than the flickering leaves !
The works of their hands, the thoughts and intents of their
hearts, — * their love, their hatred and envy,' are utterly perished !
Their religion is forsaken ; their place is unvisited as the ceme-
teries of a former age : only in the autumn landed men of
Aneyza, send their servants thither, with asses and panniers, to
dig loam for a top-dressing. As we walked we saw white slags
lying together ; where perhaps had been the workstead of some
ancient artificer. When I asked ' had nothing been found here ?'
Kenneyny told of some well-sinkers, that were hired to dig a
well in a new ground by the 'Eyarieh [the water is nigh and
good]. " They beginning to open their pit, one of them lighted
on a great earthen vessel ! — it was set in the earth mouth down-
ward [the head of an antique grave]. Then every well-digger cried
out that the treasure was his own ! none would hear his fellows'
reason — and all men have reason ! From quick words they fell to
hand-strokes ; and laid so sharply about them with their mat-
tocks, that in the end but one man was left alive. This workman
struck his vessel, with an eager heart ! — but in the shattered pot
was no more than a clot of the common earth ! " — Abdullah said
besides, ' that a wedge of fine gold had been taken up here,
within their memories. The finder gave it, when he came into

THE WAHABY RANCOUR 195

the town, for two hundred reals, to one who afterward sold the
met;il in tin1 North, for l><-tter than ;i thousand.'

\\ •• ivIiinitMl: ;HK| Kcnnryny at the end of a mile or two
rodo apart to his horse-yard; where he said he had somewhat
to show me another day. — I saw it later, a MaekMi vein, more
than a palm deep and three yards wide, in the yellow sides of
a loam pit : plainly the ashes of an antique fire, and in this old
hearth they had found potsherds! thereabove lay a fathom of
clay ; and upon that a drift of Nefiid sand. — Here had been
a seyl-bed before the land was enclosed ; but potsherds so Ivin^
under a fathom of silt may be of an high antiquity. What was
man then in the midst of Arabia? Some part of the town of
Aneyza, as the mejlis and clothiers' street, is built upon an old
seyl-ground ; and has been twice wasted by land Hoods: the
last was ninety years IK- fore.

I went home with J lamed and there came-in the younger
Abdullah el-Bessam. They spoke of the ancients, and (as
litterates) contemned the vulgar opinion of giants in former
ages : nevertheless they thought it appeared by old writings,
that men in their grandsires' time had been stronger than now ;
for they found that a certain weight was then reckoned a man's
load at Aneyza ; which were now above the strength of common
labourers: and that not a few of those old folk came to four-
score years and ten. There are many long-lived persons at
Aneyza, and I saw more grey beards in this one town, than in
all parts besides where I passed in Arabia.

But our holiday on horseback to the 'Eyarieh bred talk.
' We had not ridden there, three or four together, upon a fool's
errand ; the Nasrany in his books of secret science had some
old record of this country.' Yet the liberal townsmen bade
me daily, Not mind their foolish words ; and they added pro-
verbially, el-Arab, 'aid-bum ndkis, the Arabs are always short-
witted. Yet their crabbed speech vexed the Kenneyny, a spirit
so high above theirs, and unwont to suffer injuries. — I found
him on the morrow sitting estranged from them and offended :
" Ahks, he said, this despiteful people ! but my home is in Bosra,
and God be thanked! I shall not be much longer with them.
Oh ! Khalil, thou canst not think what they call me, — they
say, el-Kenneyny lellowwy ! " — This is some outrageous villany,
which is seldom heard amongst nomads ; and is only uttered
of anyone when they would speak extremely. The Arabs — the
most unclean and devout of lips, of mankind ! — curse all under
heaven which contradicts their humour; and the Waluiby
rancour was stirred against a townsman who was no partizan
of their blind faction, but seemed to favour the Nasrany. I

196 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

wondered to see the good man so much moved 'in his philo-
sophy ! — but he quailed before the popular religion ; which is
more than law and government, even in a free town. " A pang-
is in my heart, says an Oriental poet, because I am disesteemed
by the depraved multitude." Kenneyny was of those that have
lived for the advancement of their people, and are dead before
the time. May his eternal portion be rest and peace !

And seeing the daily darkening and averting of the Wahaby
faces, I had a careful outlaw's heart under my bare shirt ; though
to none of them had I done anything but good, — and this only
for the name of the young prophet of Galilee and the Christian
tradition ! The simpler sort of liberals were bye and bye afraid
to converse with me ; and many of my former acquaintance
seemed now to shun, that I should be seen to enter their
friendly houses. And I knew not that this came of the Mut-
towwa — that (in their Friday sermons) they moved the people
against me ! ' It is not reason, said these divines, in a time
when the Sooltan of Islam is busy in slaughtering the Nasara,
that any misbelieving Nasrany should be harboured in a faith-
ful town : and they did contrary to their duties who in any
wise favoured him.' — Kenneyny, though timid before the people,
was resolute to save me : he and the good Bessam were also in
the counsels of Zamil. — But why, I thought, should I longer
trouble them with my religion ? I asked my friends, ' When
would there be any caravan setting forth, that I might depart
with them ? ' They answered, " Have patience awhile ; for
there is none in these days."

A fanatic sometimes threatened me as I returned by the
narrow and lonely ways, near my house : " 0 kafir ! if it please
the Lord, thou wilt be slain this afternoon or night, or else to-
morrow's day. Ha ! son of mischief, how long dost thou refuse
the religion of Islam ? We gave thee indeed a time to repent,
with long sufferance and kindness! — now die in thy blind way.
for the Moslemin are weary of thee. Except thou say the testi-
mony, thou wilt be slain to-day : thou gettest no more grace,
for many have determined to kill thee." Such deadly kind of
arguments were become as they say familiar evils, in this long
tribulation of Arabian travels ; yet I came no more home twice
by the same way, in the still (prayer and coffee) hours of the
day or evening ; and feeling any presentiment I went secretly
armed : also when I returned (from friends' houses) by night I
folded the Arab cloak about my left arm ; and confided, that
as I had lived to the second year a threatened man, I should
yet live and finally escape them. * * *

CHAPTEE X

Tnr.rnKi.-n N'.M; WOVEN KKUM ANKY/A; AM>

M;CALLED

A PLEASANT afternoon resort to me out of the town was Yahya's
walled homestead. If I knocked there, and any were within, I
found a ready welcome ; and the sons of the old patriot sat
down to make coffee. Sometimes they invited me out to sup ;
and then, rather than return late in the stagnant heat, I have re-
mained to slumber under a palm-stem, in their orchard ; where a
carpet was spread for me and I might rest in the peace of God, as
in the booths of the Aarab. One evening I walked abroad with
them, as they went to say their prayers on the pure Nefud sand.
By their well Hamed showed me a peppermint plant, and
asked if it were not medicine ? he brought the (wild) seed from
// [h'tini d-Mt ,nizil\ an ancient station of the Nejd cara-
vans, in the high country before Mecca (whither I came three
months later). — I saw one climb over the clay wall from the
next plantation ! to meet us : it was the young merchant of the
rifle ! whom I had not since met with, in any good company in
the town. The young gallant's tongue was nimble : and he dis-
sembled the voice of an enemy. It was dusk when they rose
from prayers ; then on a sudden we heard shrieks in the Nefud !
The rest ran to the cry : he lingered a moment, and bade me
come to coffee on the morrow, in the town ; " Thou seest, he
said, what are the incessant alarms of our home in the desert ! "
— A company of northern (Annezy) Beduins entered the
house at that time, with me ; the men were his guests. \\7e sat
about the hearth and there came-in a child tender and beautiful
as a spring blossom ! he was slowly recovering from sickness.
Goom hubb amm-ak ! Go, and kiss thine uncle Khalil, quoth the
young man, who was his elder brother; and the sweet boy —
that seemed a flower too delicate for the common blasts of the
world, kissed me ; and afterward he kissed the Beduins, and all
the company : this is the Arabs' home tenderness, I wondered

198 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

to hear that the tribesmen were fifteen years before of this
(Kasim) dira ! They had ridden from their menzil in Syria,
by the water el-H&zzel [a far way about, to turn the northern
Nefud], in a fortnight : and left their tents standing, they told
me, by Todmor [Palmyra] ! Their coming down was about some
traffic in camels.

The small camels of Arabia increase in stature in the northern
wilderness. Hamed es-Safy sent his thelul to pasture one year
with these Aarab ; and when she was brought in again, he hardly
knew her, what for her bulk, and what for the shaggy thickness
of her wool. This Annezy tribe, when yet in Kasim, were very
rich in cattle ; for some of the sheykhs had been owners of " a
thousand camels " : until there came year after year, upon all
the country, many rainless years. Then the desert bushes
(patient of the yearly drought) were dried up and blackened,
the Nomads' great cattle perished very fast ; and a thelul of the
best blood might be purchased for two reals. — These Aarab for-
sook the country, and journeying to the north [now full of the
tribes and half tribes of Annezy], they occupied a dirat, among
their part friendly and partly hostile kinsmen.

One day when I returned to my lodging, I found that my
watch had been stolen ! 1 left it lying with my medicines. This
was a cruel loss, for my fortune was very low ; and by selling
the watch I might have had a few reals : suspicion fell upon an
infamous neighbour. The town is uncivil in comparison with
the desert ! I was but one day in the dokan, and all my vaccina-
tion pons were purloined : they were of ivory and had cost ten
reals ; — more than I gained (in twice ten months) by the practice
of medicine, in Arabia. I thought again upon the Kenneyny's
proffer, which I had passed over at that time ; and mused that
he had not renewed it ! There are many shrewd haps in Arabia ;
and even the daily piastre spent for bread divided me from the
coast : and what would become of my life, if by any evil acci-
dent I were parted from the worthy persons who were now my
friends ?

-Handicraftsmen here in a middle Nejd town (of the sanies'
caste), are armourers, tinkers, coppersmiths, goldsmiths ; and
the workers in wood are turners of bowls, wooden locksmiths,
makers of camel saddle-frames, well-wheel- wrights, and (very
unhandsome) carpenters [for they are nearly without tools] ; the
stone-workers are hewers, well-steyners and sinkers, besides
marble-wrights, makers of coffee mortars and the like ; and
house-builders and pargeters. We may go OD to reckon those
that work with the needle, seamsters and seamstresses, em-

HANDICRAFTS 190

broiderers, sandal makers. The sewimg men and women are,
so far as 1 have known them, of the libertine blood. The gold
and silver smiths of Aney/a are excellent artificers in filigraue
or thread- work : and certain of them established at Mecca are
said to excel all in the sacred town. El-Kenneyny promised
that I should see something of this fine Arabian industry ; but
the waves of their fanatical world soon cast me from him.

The salesmen are clothiers in the suk, sellers of small wares
[in which are raw drills and camel medicines, sugar-loaves,
spices, Syrian soap from Medina, coffee of the Mecca Caravans],
and sellers of victual. In the outlying quarters are small general
shops — some of them held by women, where are sold onions,
eggs, iron nails, salt, (German) matches, girdle-bread [and
certain of these poor wives will sell thee a little milk, if they
have any]. On Fridays, you shall see veiled women sitting in
the mejlis to sell chickens, and milk-skins and girbies that they
have tanned and prepared. Ingenuous vocations are husbandry,
and camel and horse dealing. All the welfaring families are
land owners. — The substantial foreign merchants were fifteen
persons.

Hazardry, banquetting, and many running sores and hideous
sinks of our great towns are unknown to them. The Arabs,
not less frugal than Spartans, are happy in the Epicurean
moderation of their religion. Aneyza is a welfaring civil town
more than other in Nomadic Arabia : in her B. Temim citizens,
is a spirit of industry, with a good plain understanding — how-
beit somewhat soured by the rheum of the Wahaby religion.

Seeing that few any more chided the children that cried
after me in the street, I thought it an evil sign ; but the
Kenneyny had not warned me, and Zamil was my friend : the
days were toward the end of May. One of these forenoons,
when I returned to my house, I saw filth cast before the thresh-
old ; and some knavish children had flung stones as I passed
by the lonely street. Whilst I sat within, the little knaves came
to batter the door ; there was a babel of their cries : the boldest
climbed by the side walls to the house terrace ; and hurled
down stones and clay bricks by the stair head. In this uproar,
I heard a ski-itching of fanatical women, " Ya, Nasiany ! thou
shalt be dead ! — they are in the way that will do it ! " I sat
MM an hour whilst the hurly-burly lasted : my door held, and
lor all their hooting, the knaves had no courage to come down
where they must meet with the kafir. At this hour the respect-
able citizens were reposing at home, or drinking coffee in thfir
friends' houses ; and it was a desolate quarter where I lodged.
At length the siege was raised ; for some persons went by who

200 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

returned from the coffee companies ; and finding, this ado about
Khalil's door, they drove away the truants, — with those extreme
curses which are always ready in the mouths of Arabs.

Later, when I would go again into the town, the lads ran
together, with hue and cry : they waylaid the Nasrany at the
corners, and cast stones from the backward ; but if the kafir
turned, the troop fled back hastily. I saw one coming — a burly
man of the people, who was a patient of mine ; and called
to him, to drive the children away. — " Complain to Zamil ! "
muttered the ungracious churl ; who to save himself from the
stones, shrank through an open door-way and forsook me. We
have seen there are none better at stone-casting than the gipsy-
like; Arabs : their missiles sung about my head, as I walked
forward, till I came where the lonely street gave upon the
Boreyda road near the Ga : some citizens passed by. The next
moment a heavy bat, hurled by some robust arm, flew by my
face. Those townsfolk stayed, and cried " ho ! " — for the stones
fell beyond them ; and one, a manly young man, shouted,
" What is this, eyyal ? akhs ! God give you confusion ; — there
was a stone, that had Khalil turned might have slain him, a
guest in the town, and under the countenance of the sheykhs
and Zamil." — No one thinks of calling them cowards.

I found the negro Aly, and persuaded him to return with
me ; and clear the lonely by-streets about my lodging. And
this he did, chasing the eyyal ; and when his blood was warmed,
fetching blows with his stick, which in their nimbleness of flies
lighted oftener upon the walls. Some neighbours accused the
fanatical hareem, and Aly, showing his negro teeth, ran on the
hags to have beaten them; but they pitifully entreated, and
promised for themselves. Yet holding his stick over one of
these, ' Wellah, he cries, the tongue of her, at the word of
Zamil, should be plucked up by the roots ! ' After this Aly
said, " All will now be peace, Khalil ! " And I took the way
to the Mejlis ; to drink coffee at Bessam's house.

Kenneyny was there : they sat at the hearth, though the
stagnant air was sultry, — but the Arabians think they taste some
refreshment when they rise from the summer fire. Because I
found in these friends a cheerfulness of heart, which is the life of
man — and that is so short ! — I did not reveal to them my trouble,
which would have made them look sad. I trusted that these
hubbubs would not be renewed in the town : so bye and bye
wishing them God's speed, I rose to depart. They have afterward
blamed me for sparing to speak, when they might have had
recourse immediately to Zamil. — In returning I found the streets
again beset nigh my house j and that the eyyal had armed

A FANATICAL TI'MI'LT I'D I

themselves with brickbats am: Sol went, down to the

., to speak with my iifighlnMir L'asheyd, /amil's ofli.
I saw in L'asheyd's shop some old shivers of Ibrahim Tanha's
bombshells; which are m»\v used in poor households for mor1
to l>r;iy-in their salt, pepper, and the like. b'a-heyd said, 'that,
/amil h;ul hoard of the children's rioting in the town. He had
sent also f'oi • t he hags, and threatened them ; and Aly had beaten
some of the lads : now there would be quietness, and J might go
home '; — but 1 thought it was not so. I returned through the
bazaar with the <I< i/ik e+tf&dr — for what heart is not straitened,
being made an outlaw of the humanity about him? were it
even of the lowest savages ! — as I marked how many in the
simps and in the way now openly murmured when they saw
me pass. Amongst the hard faces which went by me was Aly,
the executive Mmir, bearing his sword ; and Abdullah the
grudging son of /amil, who likewise (as a grown child of the
Kmir's house) carries a sword in the streets. Then Sheykh
Nasir came sternly stalking by me, without regard or saluta-
tion ! — but welcome all the experience of human life. The sun
was set, and the streets were empty, when I came again to
the door of my desolate house ; where weary and fasting, in this
trouble, I lay down and slept immediately.

I thought I had slumbered an hour, when the negro voice
of Aly awakened me ! crying at the gate, " Khalil ! — Khalil !
the Emir bids thee open." 1 went to undo for him, and looked
out. It was dark night ; but I perceived, by the shuffling feet
and murmur of voices, that there were many persons. Aly:
"The Emir calls thee; he sits yonder (in the street)!" I
went, and sat down beside him : could Zamil, I mused, be
come at these hours ! then hearing his voice, which resembled
/amil's, I knew it was another. " Whither, said the voice,
would'st thou go, — to Zllfy?" — "I am going shortly in the
company of Abdullah el-Bessam's son to Jidda." "No, no!
and Jidda (he said, brutally laughing) is very far off : but where
wilt thou go this night ? " — " Aly, what sheykh is this ? "— " It
is Aly the Emir." Then a light was brought : I saw his face
which, with a Wahaby brutishness, resembled Zamil's ; and
with him were some of his ruffian ministers. — " Emir Aly, Ullah
lead thy parents into paradise ! Thou knowest that I am sick ;
and I have certain debts for medicines here in the town ; and
to-day I have tasted nothing. If I have deserved well of some
of you, let me rest here until the morning; and then send
me away in peace." — " Nay, thy camel is ready at the corner
of the street ; and this is thy cameleer : up ! have out thy
things, and that quickly. Ho ! some of you, go in with Khalil,

202 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

to hasten him." — " And whither will ye send me, so suddenly ?
and I have no money ! " — " Ha-ha ! what is that to us, I say
come off" : (as I regarded him fixedly, the villain struck me with
his fist in the face. — If the angry instinct betray me, the rest
(I thought) would fall with their weapons upon the Nasrany : —
Aly had pulled his sword from the sheath to the half. " This, I
said to him, you may put up again ; what need of violence ? "

Rasheyd, Zamil's officer, whose house joined to mine from
the backward — though by the doors it was a street about, had
heard a rumour ; and he came round to visit me. Glad I was
to see him enter, with the sword, which he wore for Zamil.
I enquired, of him, if Aly's commandment were good ? for I could
not think that my friends among the chief citizens were consent-
ing to it ; and that the philosophical Zamil would send by night
to put me out of the town ! When I told Rasheyd that the
Wahaby Aly had struck me ; he said to me apart, " Do not pro-
voke him, only make haste, and doubtless this word is from
Zamil : for Aly would not be come of himself to compel thee."
Emir Aly called from without, " Tell Khalil to hasten ! is he not
ready?" Then he came in himself; and Rasheyd helped me
to lift the things into the bags, for I was feeble. " Whither, he
said to the Emir Aly, art thou sending Khalil ? " " To Khub-
bera." — "El-HelaUeh were better, or er-Russ ; for these lie in the
path of caravans." — " He goes to Khubbera." " Since, I said,
you drive me away, you will pay the cameleer ; for I have little
money." Emir Aly : "Pay the man his hire and make haste ; give
him three reals, Khalil." — Rasheyd: " Half a real is the hire to
Khubbera : make it less, Emir Aly." — "Then be it two reals, I
shall pay the other myself." — " But tell me, are there none the
better for my medicines in your town ? " — " We wish for no
medicines." — "Have I not done well and honestly in Aneyza ?
answer me, upon your conscience." Emir Aly : " Well, thou
hast." — "Then what dealing is this ?" But he cried, "Art thou
ready ? now mount ! " In the meanwhile, his ruffian ministers
had stolen my sandals (left without the chamber door) ; and the
honest negro Aly cried out for me, accusing them of the theft,
" 0 ye, give Khalil his sandals again ! " I spoke to the brutal
Emir ; who answered, " There are no sandals : " and over this
new mishap of the Nasrany [it is no small suffering to go bare-
foot on the desert soil glowing in the sun] he laughed apace.
"Now, art thou ready? he cries, mount then, mount! but first
pay the man his hire." — After this, I had not five reals left ; my
watch was stolen : and I was in the midst of Arabia.

Rasheyd departed : the things were brought out and laid
upon the couching camel ; and I mounted. The Emir Aly with

THE NASRANY DRIVEN FROM ANEYXA 203

his civw followed me as far as thr Mejlis. "rJYll in e, (I said
U) him) tO whom sliall J go at, Klmbbrra?" Co th«- Kmir,

and remember liis name is Abdullah el-Aly." — "Well, give me
a K'tter for him." — "I will give thee none." I heard Aly
talking in a low voice with the cameleer behind HIM; — words
(of an adversary), which doubtless boded me no good, or he had
spoken openly: when I called to him again, lie was gone home.
Tin* negro Aly, my old host, was yet with me; he would see
me friendly to the town's end. — But where, I mused, were now
my frit-lids? The negro said, that Ziimil gave the word for my
departure at these hours, to avoid any further tumult in the
town ; also the night p:issa.<jv were safer, in the desert. Perhaps
the day's hubbub had been magnified to Xamil ; they themselves
are always ready !

Aly told me, that a letter from the Muttowwa of Boreyda
had been lately brought to /amil and the sheykhs of Aneyza ;
f.r/KU'/hif/ (/ii-ni, in the name of the common faith, to send «//•"//
{//<• Xnxriinu ! — "Is this driver to trust? and are they good
p«'ople at Klubbera?" Aly answered with ayes, and added,
tk \\ rite back to me ; and it is not far : you will be there about
dawn, and in all this, believe me Khalil, I am sorry for thy
sake." He promised to go himself early to Kenneyny, with a
request from me, to send ' those few reals on account of medi-
cines ' : but he went not (as I afterward learned) ; for the
negro had been bred among Arabs, whose promises are but
words in the air, and forged to serve themselves at the moment.
— "Let this cameleer swear to keep faith with me." Aly : Ay,
come lien1 tliou Hasan! and swear thus and thus." Hasan
swore all that he would ; and at the town walls the negro
departed. There we passed forth to the dark Nefud ; and a
cool night air met us breathing from the open sand wilderness,
which a little revived me to ride : we were now in the beginning
of the stagnant summer heat of the lower Rummah country.

After an hour's riding we went by a forsaken orchard and
ruined buildings, — there are many such outlying homesteads.
The night was dim and overcast so that we could not see ground
under the camel's tread. We rode in a hollow way of the
N "hid ; but lost it after some miles. " It is well, said Hasan ;
for so we ehall be in less danger of any lurking Beduins." We
di'sc'-ndt-d at the right hand, and rode on by a firmer pluin-
grouud — the Wady er-Ruminah ; and there I saw plashes of
ponded water, which remained from the last days' showers at
Aueyza. The early summer in Kasim enters with sweet April
showers : the season was already sultry, with heavy skies, from
which some days there fell light rain ; and they looked that this

204 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

weather should continue till June. Last year,, I had seen, in
the khala, a hundred leagues to the westward, only barren heat
and drought at this season ; and (some afternoons) dust-driving
gusts and winds.

We felt our camel tread again upon the deep Nefud; and
riding on with a little starlight above us, to the middle night
we went by a grove of their bushy fuel-tree, ghrotha. The
excellence of this firewood, which is of tamarisk kind, has been
vaunted — my friends told me, by some of their (elder) poets ;
" ardent, and enduring fire (they say,) as the burning ghrotha : "
and, according to sheykh Nasir. " a covered fire of this timber
may last months long, slowly burning : which has been oft
proved in their time ; for Aneyza caravans returning over the
deserts have found embers of their former fires remaining as
much as thirty days afterward." The sere wood glows with
a clear red flame ; and a brand will burn as a torch : they prefer
it to the sammara fuel, — that we have seen in so much estima-
tion at Kheybar.

Hasan my back-rider, was of the woodman's trade. He
mounted from his cottage in the night time ; at dawn he came
to the trees, and broke sere boughs, and loaded ; and could be
at home again in Aneyza by the half-afternoon. He was partner
in the wooden beast under us — an unbroken dromedary, with
Zatnil, who had advanced half the price, fifteen reals. Small
were his gains in this painful and perilous industry ; and yet
the fellow had been good for nothing else. I asked him where-
fore he took of me for this night's journey as much as he
gained, doing the like, in eight or nine days ? ' The Nefud, he
answered, was now full of unfriendly Aarab, and he feared to
lose the thelul; he would not otherwise have adventured,
although he had disobeyed Zamil. — He told me, this sending
me away was determined to-night, in a council of the sheykh s ;
he said over their names, and among them were none of my
acquaintance. H£san had heard their talk; for Zamil sent
early to call him, and bade him be ready to carry Haj Khalil :
the Emir said at first, to el-Biikerich — for the better opportunity
of passing caravans ; but the rest were for Khubbera.

— Hasan dismounted about a thing I had not seen hitherto
used in the Arab countries, although night passengers and
Beduins are not seldom betrayed by the braying of their
theluls: he whipped his halter about the great sheep-like
brute's muzzle! which cut off" farther complainings. I was
never racked by camel riding as in this night's work, seated on a
sharp pack-saddle: the snatching gait of the untaught thelul, wont
only to carry firewood, was through the long hours of darkness,

KHUBBERA m3

.* could I think of flamil ?— was I heretofore so
en in the man ?

Histn at length drew bridle ; I opened my eyes and saw the
new sun looking over the shoulder of the Nefud : the fellow
alighted to say his prayer ; also the light revealed to me the
squalid ape-like visage of this companion of the way. We were
gone somewhat wide in the night time ; and Hisan, who might
be thirty yean of age, had not passed the Nefud to Khnbbera
since his childhood. From the next dune we saw the heads of
the palms of el-Helalieh. The sand sea lay in great banks and
troughs : over these, we were now riding ; and when the sun
was risen from the earth, the day-built town of Khubbera [or
>ra] appeared before us, without palms or greenness. The
tilled lands are not in sight ; they lie, five miles long, in the
bottom of the Wady er-Rnmmah, and thereof is the name of
their gtri*. Amidst the low-built Nefud town, stands a high clay
watch-tower, ffdsan : " Say not when thou comest to the place,
'I am a Nasranv,' because they might not receive ther
"Have they not" heard of the Nasrany, from Aneyza?"— " It
may be ; for at this time there is much carriage of grain to the
Bessam?, who are lenders there also."

We saw plashes, a little beside onr way. " Let ns to the
water," quoth Hasan. — ''There is water in the girby, and we
are come to the inhabited-" — "But I am to set thee down there ;
for thus the I bade me." — Again I saw my life betrayed !

and this would be worse than when the Bon-yda cameleer
(of the same name) forsook me nigh Aneyza ; for in Aneyza
was the hope of Zamil : Khubbera. a poor town of peasant
folk, and ancient colony of Kahtan, is under Boreyda ;
the place was jet a mile 'distant. — •• Thou shalt set me down
in the midst of the town; for this thou hast received my
Mm." H6san notwithstanding made his beast kneel under
as; I alighted, and he came to unload my bags. I put him
away, and taking oat a bundle in which was my pistol,
the wretch saw the naked steel in my hands !— " Rafik,
if thon art afraid to enter, I shall ride alone to the town gate,
and unload ; and so come thou and take thy thelul again : but
make me no resistance, ket I shoot her ; because thon betrayest
my life," " I carry this romh, answered the javel, to help me
against any who would take my thelul." — I went to unmusmW
the brace; that with the halter in my hand 1 might lead her to
Khnbbera.

A man of the town was at some store-houses not far off ; he
had marked onr contention, and came running : " Oh ! what is

206 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

it ? (he asked) ; peace be with you." I told him the matter,
and so did Hasan, who said no word of my being a Nasrany :
nor had the other seen me armed. The townsman gave it that
the stranger had reason ; so we mounted and rode to the walls.
But the untrained thelul refused to pass the gates : alighting
therefore we shackled her legs with a cord, and left her ; and I
compelled Hasan to take my bags upon his shoulders, and carry
them in before me. — So we came to the wide public place ; and
he cast them down there and would have forsaken me ; but I
would not suffer it. Some townspeople who came to us ruled,
That I had right, and Hasan must bear the things to the kahwat
of the emir.

I heard said behind me, " It is some stranger ; " and as so
many of these townspeople are cameleers and almost yearly
pilgrims to the holy places, they have seen many strangers. —
We entered the coffee hall ; where an old blind man was sitting
alone — Aly, father of the Emir ; who rising as he heard this
concourse, and feeling by the walls, went about to prepare
coffee. The men that entered after me sat down each one
after his age and condition, under the walls, on three sides of
their small coffee-chamber. Not much after them there came
in the Emir himself, who returned from the fields a well-
disposed and manly fellah. They sent out to call my rafik to
coffee ; but Hasan having put down my things was stolen out of
their gate again. The company sat silent, till the coffee should
be ready ; and when some of them would have questioned me
the rest answered, "But not yet." Certain of the young men
already laid their heads together, and looking up between their
whispers they gazed upon me. I saw they were bye and bye
persuaded, that I could be none other than that stranger who
had passed by Boreyda — the wandering Nasrany.

Driven thus from Aneyza, I was in great weariness; and
being here without money in the midst of Arabia, I mused of
the Kenneyny, and the Bessam, so lately my good friends !—
Could they have forsaken me ? Would Kenneyny not send me
money ? and how long would this people suffer me to continue
amongst them ? Which of them would carry me any whither,
but for payment? and that I must begin to require for my
remedies, from all who were not poor : it might suffice me to
purchase bread, — lodging I could obtain freely. I perceived by
the grave looking of the better sort, and the side glances of the
rest, when I told my name, that they all knew me. One asked
already, ' Had I not medicines ? ' but others responded for me,
" To-morrow will be time for these enquiries." I heard the

BLIND ALY 207

ornir himself say under his breath, 'they would send me to the
llelalieh, or tin- A'///,vv/W/.' — Their eofl'ee was of tli niy

Khul>l>era hosts seemed to be. poor householders, When the
roH'.'e-server had poured out a second time the company rose to
depart

Onlv old AIv remained, lie crept; over where I wan, and l»-t
himself down on his hands beside the hakim ; and ga/ing with
his squalid eyeballs enquired, if with some medicine I could not
help his sight? I saw that the eyes were not perished. " Ay,
help my father ! said the emir, coming in again ; and though it
were but a little yet that would be dear to me." I asked the
emir, " Am I in safety here ?" — " I answer for it; stay some
days and cure my father, also we shall see how it will be." Old
Aly promised that he would send me freely to er-Russ — few
miles distant ; from whence I might ride in the next (Mecca)
samn kafily, to Jidda. The men of er-Rnss [pronounce 6r-Russ\
are nearly all caravaners. I enquired when the caravan would
set forth ? " It may be some time yet ; but we will ascertain for
thee." — " I have not fully five reals [20s.J and these bags ; may
that suffice ? " — " Ay, responded the old man, I think we may
find some one to mount thee for that money."

Whilst we were speaking, there came in, with bully voices
and a clanking of swords and long guns, some strangers ; who
were thelul troopers of the Boreyda Prince's band, and such as
we have seen the rajajil at Hayil. The honest swaggerers had
ridden in the night time ; the desert being now full of thieves.
They leaned up matchlocks to the wall, hanged their swords on
the tenters, and sat down before the hearth with ruffling smiles ;
and they saluted me also : but I saw these rude men with
apprehension ; lest they should have a commission from Hasan
to molest me : after coffee they mounted to an upper room to
sleep. And on the morrow I was easy to hear that the riders
had departed very early, for er-Russ : these messengers of
Weled Mahanna were riding round to the oases in the princi-
pality [of Boreyda], to summon the village sheykhs to a common
council.

Old Aly gave me an empty house next him, for my lodging,
and had my bags carried thither. At noon the blind sire led
me himself, upon his clay stairs, to an upper room ; where I
found a slender repast prepared for me, dates and girdle-bread
and water. He had been emir, or we might say mayor of
Khubbera under Boreyda, until his blindness ; when his son
succeeded him, a man now of the middle age ; of whom the old
man spoke to all as ' the emir '. The ancient had taken to him-
self a young wife of late ; and when strange man-folk were not

208 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

there, she sat always beside her old lord ; and seemed to love
him well. They had between them a little son ; but the child
was blear-eyed, with a running ophthalmia. The grey-beard
bade the young mother sit down with the child, by the hakim ;
and cherishing their little son, with his aged hands, he drew him
before me.

Old Aly began to discourse with me of religion ; enforcing
himself to be tolerant the while. He joyed devoutly to hear,
there was an holy rule of men's lives also in the Christians' re-
ligion.— " Eigh me ! ye be good people, but not in the right way,
that is pleasing unto Ullah ; and therefore it profiteth nothing.
The Lord give thee to know the truth and say, There is none God
but the Lord, and Mohammed is the apostle of the Lord." — A deaf
man entering suddenly, troubled our talk ; demanding ere he sat
down, would I cure his malady ? " And what, I asked, wouldst
thou give the hakim, if he show thee a remedy ? " The fellow
answered, " Nothing surely ! Wouldst thou be paid for only
telling a man, — wilt thou not tell me ? eigh ! " and his wrath
began to rise. Aly : " Young man, such be not words to speak
to the hakim, who will help thee if he may." — "Well tell him,
I said, to make a horn of paper, wide in the mouth, and lay the
little end to his ear ; and he shall hear the better." — The fellow,
who deemed the Nasrany put a scorn upon him, bore my saying
hardly. " Nay, if the thing be rightly considered, quoth the
ancient sheykh, ifc may seem reasonable ; only do thou after
Khalil's bidding." But the deaf would sit no longer. 'The
cursed Nasrany, whose life (he murmured) was in their hand, to
deride him thus ! ' and with baleful looks he flung out from us.
— A young man, who had come in, lamented to me the natural
misery of his country ; " where there is nothing, ' aid he, be-
sides the incessant hugger-mugger of the suanies. I have a
brother settled, and welfaring in the north ; and if I knew
where I might likewise speed, wellah I would go thither, and
return no more." — " And leave thy old father and mother to
die ! and forget thine acquaintance ? " — " But my friends would
be of them among whom I sojourned." — Such is the mind of
many of the inhabitants of el-Kasim.

On the morrow there arrived two young men riding upon
a thelul, to seek cures of the mudowwy ; the one for his eyes,
and his rafik for an old visceral malady. They were from the
farthest palm and corn lands of Khubbera,— loam bottoms or
rauthas in the Wady; that last to the midway betwixt this
town and er-Russ. When they heard, that they must lay
down the price of the medicines, elevenpence — which is a field

KHTIiliKlIA I'KASAN
wages (besides his ration.sjf'or three da. \ tl,

to suffer their diseases fur other years, whilst it plea.-.-d niah,

rather than :id\ cut lire the silver. — " Nay, but run- us, and
will pay at the full: if thy remedies help us, will not the
come riding to thee from all < In- villages ? '' Hut I would not
hear; and, with many reproaches, the sorry young mm mounted,
to ride home again.

1 found my medieal credit high at. Khubbera: for one of my
Aney/a patients was their townswoman : the Nasriiny's eye-
washes som» -\vhat cleared her sight; and the Fame had pn
the Nefud. I was soon called away to visit, a sick pn>on. At
tin1 kaliwa door, the boy who led the hakim bade me stand
contrary to the custom of Arabian hospitality— whilst he went,
in to tell them. I heard the child say, "The kafir is come;"
and their response in like sort, — I entered then ! and sat down
among them ; and blamed that householder's uncivil 11-
because I had reason, the peasants were speechless ard out of
countenance; the coffee maker hastened to pour me out a cup :
and so rising I left them. — I wondered that all Khubbera should
be so silent! I saw none in the streets; I heard no cheerful
knelling of coffee-pestles in their clay town. In these days the
most were absent, for the treading out and winnowing of their
corn : the harvest was light, because their corn had been beaten
by hail little before the ear ripened. The house-building of
Khubbera is rude ; and the place is not unlike certain village-
towns of Upland Syria. I passed through long uncheerful streets
of half-ruinous clay cottages; but besides some butchers' stalls
and a smith's forge, I saw no shop or merchandise in the town.
Their mosque stands by the mejlis, and is of low clay building :
thereby I saw a brackish well — only a fathom deep, where
they wash before prayers. They have no water to drink in the
town, for the ground is brackish ; but the housewives must go
out to fill their girbies from wells at some distance. The watch-
tower of Khubbera, built of clay — great beneath as a small
chamber, and spiring upward to the height of the gallery, is in
the midst of the acre-great Mejlis : and therein [as in all Kasim
towns] is held the Friday's market ; when the nomads, coming
also to pray at noon in the mesjid, bring camels and small cattle
and samn.

— It was near mid-day : and seeing but three persons sitting
on a clay bench in the vast forsaken Mejlis, I went to sit down
by them. One of these had the aspect of a man of the stone
age ; a wild grinning seized by moments upon his half human
\i>a_<re. I questioned the others who sat on yawning and in-
different : and they began to ask me of my religion. The elf-

VOL. II. O

210 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

like fellow exclaimed : " Now were a knife brought and put to
the wezand of him ! — which billah may be done lawfully, for the
Muttowwa says so ; and the Nasrany not confessing, la ilak ill'
Ullah ! pronounce, Bismillah er-rahman, er-rahim (in the name
of God the pitiful, the god of the bowels of mercies), and cut
his gullet ; and gug-gug-gug ! — this kafir's blood would gurgle
like the blood of a sheep or camel when we carve her halse :
I will run now and borrow a knife." — " Nay, said they, thou
mayest not do so." I asked them, " Is not he a Beduwy ? —
but what think ye, my friends ? says the wild wretch well or
no?" — "We cannot tell: THIS is THE RELIGION ! Khalil; but we
would have no violence, — yes, he is aBeduwy." — " What is thy
tribe, 0 thou sick of a devil ? "— " I Harby."— " Thou liest ! the
Harb are honest folk : but I think, my friends, this is an Aufy"
— "Yes, God's life ! I am of Auf ; how knowest thou this, Nas-
rany ? — does he know everything ! " — " Then my friends, this
fellow is a cut-purse, and cut-throat of the pilgrims that go
down to Mecca, and accursed of God and mankind ! " The
rest answered, " Wellah they are cursed, and thou sayest well :
we have a religion, Khalil, and so have ye." But the Aufy
laughed to the ears, ha-ha-hi-hi-hi ! for joy that he and his
people were men to be accounted-of in the world. " Ay billah,
quoth he, we be the Haj-cutters." — They laughed now upon
him ; and so I left them.

When I complained of the Aufy's words to the emir, he
said — wagging the stick in his hand, "Fear nothing! and in
the meanwhile cure the old man my father: wellah, if any
speak a word against thee, I will beat him until there is no
breath left in him ! — The people said of the emir, " He is poor
and indebted : " much of their harvest even here is grown for
the Bessani ; who take of them ten or twelve in the hundred :
if paid in kind they are to receive for every real of usury one-
third of a real more. After this I saw not the emir ; and his
son told me he was gone to el-Bukerieb, to ride from thence in
the night-time to Boreyda : they journey ia the dark, for fear
of the Beduw. Last year Abdullah the eniir and fifteen men of
Khubbera returning from the Haj, and having only few miles
to ride home, after they left the Boreyda caravan, had been
stripped and robbed of their theluls, by hostile Beduw.

The townspeople that I saw at Khubbera was fellahin-like
bodies, ungracious, inhospitable. No man called the stranger
to coffee ; I had not seen the like in Arabia, even among the
black people at Kheybar : in this place maybe nigh 600 houses.
Many of their men were formerly Ageylies at Medina ; but the
Turkish military pay being very long withheld of late, they

Tin-; \\SI;\\Y i;i-;r\Lu<;n p,v /.\MIL 211

IKK I fmsaki'ii (In- . K hiiltht-ni is a, sitn without any

n:itur;il amenity, enclosed l>y a clay wall: and strange it i
< his d<^>'i I (own, lo ln'.'ir n<> (T.-aking and shrilling of suan

The emir rind liis old fatln-r were the best of .'ill that I met
with in (his pi

- 'Tin- Keimeyny, I thought-, will not f<>i>;d<r mo ! ' hut now

••»M»1 day had p.i— »•<!. I saw tin1 third sun ii>e to the hot

noon; an«l then, with a weary In-arl, I went tn repose in my

lodging. Dye and l>ye I hoard some knor.kini;' at the door, rind

young men's voiei -s \\ it hont, — "Open, Khalil ! /amil has sent

the*." J drew the l)»lt; and saw the cameleer H

ding by the threshold ! — " Hast thou brought me a lett<

—"I have brought none." I led him in to Alv, that the fatherly

man might, hoar his tale. — '/arnil recalled rue, to send me by

tin* kafily which was to set out for Jidda.' — But we knew that

the convoy could not be ready for certain weeks ! and I asked

Aly, should I mount with no more to assure me than the

words of this Ha"san ? — it had been better for the old man that

I continued here awhile, for his eyes' sake. " Well, said he, go

Khalil, and doubt not at all ; go in peace ! " I asked for vials,

and made eye-washes to leave with him : the old sire was

pleased with this grateful remembrance.

Some young men took up my bags of good will, and bore
them through the streets ; and many came along with us to the
gates, where li;i-an had left his thelul. — When we were riding
forth I saluted the bystanders : but all those Kahtanites were
not of like good mind ; for some recommended me to Iblis, the
most were silent ; and mocking children answered my parting
word with // / — instead of the goodly Semitic

valedicti' --.a /tunny, ' go in peace '.

We came riding four miles over the Nefud, to the Helalieh :
the solitary mountain Sag, which has the shape of a pine-apple,
appeared upon our left hand, many miles distant. The rock,
he Arabs, is hard and ruddy-black : — it might be a plu tonic
outlyer in the border of the sand country. As we approached,
1 saw other palms, and a high watch-tower, two miles beyond ;
of another oasis, el-Bukerieh : between these settlements is a
place where they find "men's bones" mingled with cinders,
and the bones of small cattle ; which the people ascribe to the
B. Helal — of whom is the name of the village, where we now
arrived. El-Bukerieh is a station of the cameleers ; and they
are traffickers to the Beduw. Some of them are well enriched ;
and they traded at first with money borrowed of the Bessam.

The villagers of Helalieh and of Bukerleh (ancient Sbeya

212 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

colonies) would sooner be under Zamil and Aneyza than subject
to Hasan Weled Mahanna — whom they call jabbdr : they pay
tax to Boreyda ; five in the hundred. Of these five, one-fourth
is for the emir or mayor of the place ; an half of the rest was
formerly Ibn Baud's, and the remnant was the revenue of the
princes of Boreyda ; but now Weled Mahanna detains the
former portion of the Wahaby. — Their corn is valued by mea-
sure, the dates are sold by weight. At the Helalieh are many
old wells " of the B. Helal ". Some miles to the westward is
TJwlfa, an ancient village, and near the midway is an hamlet
Shcliieh : at half a journey from Bukerieh upon that side are
certain winter granges and plantations of Boreyda. — One cried
to 'us, as we entered the town, " Who is he with thee, Hasan ? "
— " A Nasrany dog, answered the fellow [the only Nejcl Arabian
who ever put upon me such an injury], or I cannot tell what ;
and I am carrying him again to Aneyza as Zamil bids me." —
Such an unlucky malignant wight as my cameleer, whose
strange looking discomforts the soul, is called in this country
mishur, bewitched, enchanted. When I complained of the elf
here in his native village — though from a child he had dwelt at
Aneyza, they answered me, "Ay, he is mishur, mesquin!" —
We rode through the streets and alighted where some friendly
villagers showed us the kahwa.

Many persons entered with us ; and they left the highest
place for the guest, which is next the coffee maker. A well-clad
and smiling host came soon, with the coffee berries in his hand :
but bye and bye he said a word to me as bitter as his coffee,
" How farest thou ? 0 adu (thou enemy of) Ullah ! " Adu
is a book word ; but he was a koraii reader. — " I am too
simple to be troubled with so wise a man : is every camel too a
Moslem ? " "A camel, responded the village pedant, is a
creature of Ullah, irrational ; and cannot be of any religion. "-
" Then account me a camel : also I pray Ullah send thee some
of the aches that are in my weary bones ; and now leave finding
fault in me, who am here to drink coffee." The rest laughed,
and that is peace and assurance with the Arabs : they answered
him, "He says reason; and trouble not Khalil, who is over
weary." — But the koran reader would move some great divinity
matter : " Wherefore dost thou not forsake, Nasrany, your
impure religion (din nfyis) ; and turn to the right religion of
the Moslemin ? and confess with us, ' There is an only God and
Mohammed is his Sent One ' ? — And, with violent looks, he
cries, I say to thee abjure ! Khalil." I thought it time to
appease him : the beginning of Mawmetry was an Arabian
factio^ and so they ever think it a sword matter. — " 0 What-

A rillMSTIAN BY ULLAH'S PROVIDENCE

i --Hiv-namt', li;ivo done thmi ; for 1 am of too little under-
^trimlmg to ;iff:iiu to your lii-li things.*1 It fielded the village
reader's MM! to hear him -elf extolled l>y a son of the ingen.

ra. "No iiioiv, I added: the Same who cnst me upon
coasts, may esteem an upright life to be a p ray er before
Him. A a for me, was I not born a ( 'hrisl ian, l>y the providence
of Ulltili ? and His providence is good; therefore it was good
for me to be born a Christian ! and good for me to be born, it is
good for me to live a Christian ; and when it shall please (-if ><1,
to die a Christian : and if I were afraid to die, I were not a
Christian ! " Some exclaimed, " He has well spoken, and i
ought to molest him." The pedant murmured, " But if Klialil
knew letters — so much as to read his own scriptures, he would
have discerned the truth, that Mohammed is Seal of the prophets
and the apostle of Ullah."

Even here my remedies purchased me some relief; for a
patient led me away to breakfast. We returned to the kahwa ;
and about mid-afternoon the village company, which sat thick
as flies in that small sultry chamber, went forth to sit in the
street dust, under the shadowing wall of the Mejlis. They bade
me be of good comfort, and 110 evil should betide me : for here,
said they, the Arabs are muhdkimin, 'under rulers.' [The
Arabs love not to be in all things so straitly governed. 1 re-
member a young man of el-Weshm, of honest parentage, who
complained ; that in his Province a man durst not kill one out-
right, though he found him lying with his sister, nor the adul-
terer in his house : for not only must he make satisfaction, to
the kindred of the slain ; but he would be punished by the laws!]
Some led me through the orchards ; and I saw that their wells
were deep as those of Aneyza.

In the evening twilight I rode forth with Hasan. The moon
was rising, and he halted at an outlying plantation ; where
there waited two Meteyr Beduins, that would go in company
with us, — driving a few sheep to their menzil near Aneyza. The
mother of Hasan and some of her kindred brought him on the
way. They spoke under their breath ; and I heard the hag bid
her son * deal with the Nasrany as he found good, — so that he
delivered himself ! ' — Glad I was of the Beduin fellowship ; and
to hear the desert men's voices, as they climbed over the wall,
saying they were our rafiks. — We journeyed in the moon-light ;
and I sat crosswise, so that I might watch the shadow of Hasan's
lance, whom I made to ride upon his feet. I saw by the stars
that our course lay eastward over the Nefud billows. After two
hours we descended into the Wady er-Ruramah. — The Beduin
companions were of the mixed Aarab, which remain in thisdira

214 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

since the departure of Annezy. They dwell' here together
under the protection of Zamil ; and are called Aarab Zdmil.
They are poor tribe's-folk of Meteyr and of Ateyba, that want-
ing camels have become keepers of small cattle in the Nefud,
where are wells everywhere and not deep: they live at the ser-
vice of the oases, and earn a little money as herdsmen of the
suany and caravan camels. Menzils of these mixed Arabs re-
move together : they have no enemies ; and they bring their
causes to Zamil.

An hour after middle night we halted in a deep place among
the' dunes ; and being now past the danger of the way they
would slumber here awhile. — Rising before dawn, we rode on by
the Wady er-Rummah ; which lay before us like a long plain
of firm sand, with much greenness of desert bushes and growth
of ghrottha : and now I saw this tree, in the daylight, to be a
low weeping kind of tamarisk. The sprays are bitter, rather
than — as the common desert tamarisk — saline: the Kasim
camels wreathe to it their long necks to crop mouthfuls in the
march. — The fiery sun soon rose on that Nefud horizon : the
Beduins departed from us towards their menzil ; and we rode
forth in the Wady bottom, which seemed to be nearly au hour
over. We could not be many miles from Aueyza : — I heard then
a silver descant of some little bird, that flitting over the desert
bushes, warbled a musical note which ascended on the gamut!
and this so sweetly, that I could not have dreamed the like.

I sought to learn, from my brutish companion, what were
Zamil's will concerning me, I asked, whither he carried me ?
Hasan answered, ' To the town ; ' and I should lodge in that great
house upon the Ga, — the house of Rasheyd, a northern mer-
chant, now absent from Aneyza. We were already in sight of an
outlying corn ground ; and Hasan held over towards a plantation
of palms, which appeared beyond. When we came thither, he
dismounted to speak with some whose voices we heard in the
coffee-bower, — a shed of sticks and palm branches, which is also
the husbandmen's shelter. — Hasan told them, that Zamil's word
had been to set me down here ! Those of the garden had not
heard of it : after some talk, one Ibrahim, the chief of them, in-
vited me to dismount and come in ; and he would ride himself
with Hasan to the town, to speak with Zamil. They told me
that Aneyza might be seen from the next dunes. This outlying
property of palms lies in a bay of the Wady, at little distance
(southward) from el-'Eyarieh.

They were busy here to tread out the grain : the threshing-
floor was but a plot of the common ground ; and I saw a row
of twelve oxen driven round about a stake, whereto the inmost

A VISIT [-ROM KFA'N'KYNY

boast is l)ouiul. Tin- ears of corn ran l>e lit.th- better than
brui>ed from the stalks thus, and the grain is afn-rward beaten
on! l>v women of the household with wooden mallets. Their
winnowing is but th'- en-ting ii|> this briii ad -tr.w to th»-
liv liandl'uls. A yn -at sack of the ear and grain was !<•
upon a thelul, and sent home many times in the day, to

K:)N|I,'\ d'v tiiWIl house.

The hiidi-walled o>iirl, or kftST of this ground was a four-
si 1 11 are building in clay, sixty paces upon a side, with low
corner towers. In the midst is the well of seven fathoms to
the rock, steyned with dry masonry, a double camel-yard, and
stalling for kine and asses ; chambers of a slave woman care-
taker and her son, rude store-houses in the towers, and the
well-driver's beyt. The cost of this castle-like clay yard had
been a hundred reals, for labour ; and of the well five hundred.
An only gateway into this close was barred at nightfall* Such
redoubts — impregnable in the weak Arabian warfare, are made
in all outlying properties. The farm beasts were driven in at
the going down of the sun.

At mid-afternoon I espied two horsemen descending from the
Nefud. It was Kenneyny with es-Safy, who came to visit me.
—Abdullah told me that neither he nor Bessam, nor any of
the friends, had notice that night of my forced departure from
Aneyza. They first heard it in the morning ; when Hamed,
who had bidden the hakim to breakfast, awaited me an hour,
and wondered why I did not arrive. As it became known that
the Nasrany had been driven away in the night, the towns-
people talked of it in the suk : many of them blamed the
sheykhs. Kenneyny and Bessam did not learn all the truth
till evening ; when they went to Zamil, and enquired, * Where-
fore had he sent me away thus, and without their knowledge ? '
Xainil answeied, 'That such had been the will of the mejlis,'
and he could not contradict them. My friends said, ' But if
Khalil should die, would not blame be laid to Aneyza ? — since
the Nasrany had bean received into the town. Khalil was ibn
jnfid, and it became them to provide for his safe departure.'
Bessam, to whom nothing could be refused, asked Zamil to
recall Khalil ; — e who might, added el-Kenneyny, remain in one
of the outlying jeneynies if he could not be received again into
the town [because of the Wahaby malice], until some kalily
were setting forth.' Zamil consented, and sent for Hdsan ; and
bade him ride back to Khubbera, to fetch again Haj Khalil.
My friends made the man mount immediately ; and they named
to Zamil these palms of Rasheyd.

216 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

Abdullah said that none would molest me here ; I might take
rest, until he found means for my safe departure : and whither,
he asked, would I go? — "To Jidda." He said, 'he should
labour to obtain this also for me, from Zamil ; and of what had

I present need ? ' — I enquired should I see him again ? —

II Perhaps no ; thou knowest what is this people's tongue ! "
Then I requested the good man to advance money upon my
bill ; a draft-book was in my bags, against the time of my
arriving at the coast ; and I wrote a cheque for the sum of a
few reals. Silver for the Kenneyny in his philosophical hours
was nfy'is ed-dinya " world's dross " ; nevertheless the merchant
now desired Hamed (my disciple in English) to peruse the
ciphers ! But that was surely of friendly purpose to instruct
me ; for with an austere countenance he said further, " Trust
not, Khalil, to any man ! not even to me." In his remem-
brance might be my imprudent custom, to speak always plainly ;
even in matter of religion. Here, he said, I was in no danger of
the crabbed Emir Aly : when I told my friend that the Wababy
mule had struck me, " God, he exclaimed, so smite Aly ! " — The
bill, for which he sent me on the morrow the just exchange in
silver, came to my hands after a year in Europe : it had been
paid at Beyrut. — Spanish crowns are the currency of Kasim : I
have asked, how could the foreign merchants carry their fortunes
(in silver) over the wilderness ? it was answered, " in the strong
pilgrimage caravans." * * *

CHAPTER XI

TIIK KAIITAN KX I'KLLED FROM KI.-KASIM

THKSI: \ver^ sultry days ; and in tin1 hours of most heat
I commonly found (in our arbour) 97° F., with heavy skies.
The wells are of h've, four and three fathoms, as they lie lower
towards the Wady ; and a furlong beyond, the water is so nigh
that young palm-sets in pits should need no watering, after a
year or two. The thermometer in the well-water — which in this
air seemed cool, showed 87° F. A well sunk at the brim of the
Nefiid yields fresh ground-water ; but wells made (lower) in the
L:;I ;ire somewhat brackish. Corn, they say, comes up better in
brackish ground ; and green corn yellowing in sweet land may
be restored by a timely sprinkling of salt. All the wells reek in
the night air : the thermometer and the tongue may discern
between well-waters that lie only a few rods asunder : the
water is cooler which rises from the sandstone, and that is
warmer which is yielded from crevices of the rock.

Of all wells in Aneyza, there is but one of purely sweet
water! — the sheykhs send thither to fill their girbies in the low
summer season. It is in the possession of a family whose head,
Abu Daud, one of the emigrated Kusnmn, lived at Damascus ;
where he was now sheykh of the Ageyl. and leader of the rear
guard in the Haj caravan. [Abu Daud told me, he had returned
but once, in twenty-five years, for a month, to visit his native
place !] — Water from Rasheyd's two wells was raised inces-
santly by the labour of five nagas ; and ran down in sandy
channels (whereby they sowed water-melons, in little pits, with
camel jella) to a small pool, likewise bedded in the loamy sand.
These civil Arabians have not learned to burn lime, and build
themselves conduits and cisterns. The irrigation pond in Kasim
lies commonly under the dim shadow of an undressed vine ; which
planted in the sand by water will shoot upon a trellis to a green
wood. We have seen vines a covert for well-walks at Teyma.
The camels labour here under an awning of palm branches.

218 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

The driving at the wells, which began in the early hours after
midnight, lasts till near nine, when the day's heat is already
great. — At the sun-rising you may see women (of the well-
driver's family) sit with their baskets in the end of the shelving
well walk, to feed the toiling camels : they wrap a handful of
vetches in as much dry forage cut in the desert ; and at every
turn the naga receives from her feeder's hands the bundle thrust
into her mouth. The well-cattle wrought anew from two in the
afternoon, till near seven at evening, when they were fed again.
The well-driver, who must break every night his natural rest,
and his wife to cut trefoil and feed the camels, received three
reals and a piastre — say thirteen shillings, by the month ; and
they must buy their own victual. A son drove the by- well, and
the boy's sisters fed his pair of camels. They lived leanly with
drawn brows and tasting little rest, in a land of idle rest.
[Whenever I asked any of these poor souls, How might he
endure perpetually? he has answered the stranger (with a
sigh), That he was inured thereto from a child, and — min
Ullali ! the Lord enabled him.] — But the labouring lads in the
jeneyny fared not amiss ; they received 4d a day besides their
rations : they have less when hired by the month. I saw the
young Snuggery, a good and diligent workman, agree to serve
Rasheyd six months for nine reals and his rations ; and he
asked for a tunic (two-thirds of a real more), which was not
denied him. There is no mention in these covenants of harbour ;
but where one will lie down on the sand, under the stars of God,
there is good night-lodging (the most months of the twelve), in
this summer country.

The lads went out to labour from the sunrise : and when
later the well-pool is let out, yurussdn el-md, they distributed
the water running down in the channels ; and thus all the pans
of the field, and the furrows of the palms are flushed, twice in
the day. — Of this word russ is the name of the Kasim oasis er-
Russ. Thsjet was flooded twice a week; and this trefoil, grown
to a foot high, may be cut every fifteen days [as at Damascus],
— the soil was sand. The eyyal wrought sheltered in the bower,
as we have seen, in the sultry afternoons and heard tales, till
vespers. Then one of them cried to prayers ; the rest ran to
wash, and commonly they bathed themselves in the well. It
was a wonder then to see them not doubt to leap down, one
upon the neck of another, from an height of thirty feet ! to
the water ; and they plashed and swam sometime in that narrow
room : they clambered up again, like lizards, holding by their
fingers and toes in the joints of the stone-work. After they
had prayed together, the young men laboured abroad again

DAT IS AND LnnrSTS

till lln' sun was setting; when tliev ; and their flu;

\v;is l»wuglit to tin-Hi, from tii< Supper is tin- chi»T

iin'jil in Arabia; and here it was :i plentiful warm mess of Bod
whe.-ilen stuff, good I'm- hungry raen.

The work-day ended with the sun, the rest is keyif ': 0

C a long liour niusi they My the last, prayers. The lads of
the garden (without roiVee or tobacco) SIHL- the evening time
v ; or run chasing r;ieh other like colts, through the dim
rt. On moonlight nights they played to the next palm-
yards ; and oft times all the eyyfil came again with loud
and beating the tamb&T. rTlie ruder raerrymake of the young
Arab servants and husbandmen was without villany ; and they
kept this round for two or three hours : or else .all sitting down
in a ring together at the kasr gate, the Snuggery entert
his fellows with some new tales of marvellous adventures.

In every oasis, are many date-kinds. The moat at Aneyzaare
the ,-t'if/i or ; moist' (good for plain diet), of the palm which is
called the cs-Shukra, or Sbnggera, of that Weshm oasis. They
have besides a dry kind, both cool and sweet, which is carried
v eel meat in their caravan journeys. Only the date-palm is
planted in Arabia: the dnm. or branched nut-palm, is a wilding
[in the llejaz and Tehama], — in sites of old settlements, where
t he ground-water is near ; and in some low desert valleys. The
nut's woody rind (thrice the bigness of a goose's egg) is eaten ;
and dry it has the taste of ginger-bread. — When later in the
year 1 was in Bombay, I found a young man of Shuggera at the
Arab : we walked through the suburbs together, and I

showed him some cocoa-nut palms, — " Ye have none such, I
. in Xej-i ! " " Nay, he responded austerely, not these : there
is no li'n'(i]t-'i. with them ! " — a word spoken in the (eternal)
Semitic meaning, "All is vanity which is not bread."

The fruit-stalks hanged already — with full clusters of green
Ix-rries — in the crowns of the female palms : the promise was
of an abundant harvest, which is mostly seen after the scarcity
and destruction of a locust-year. Every cluster, which had in-
closed in it a spray of the male blossom, was lapped about with a
wisp of dry forage ; and this defended the sets from early flights
of locusts. The Nejd husbandman is every year a loser by the
former and latter locusts, which are bred in the land ; besides
what clouds of them are drifted over him by the winds from he
knows not whither. This year there were few hitherto and weak
llights ; but sometimes with the smooth wind that follows the
sun-rising the flickering jardd drove in upon us : and then the
1 ids. with palm branches of a spear's length, ran hooting in the
orchard and brushed them out of the trees and clover. The

220 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

fluttering insects rising before them with a wliir-r-r ! were borne
forth to the Nefud. The good lads took up the bodies of the
slain crying, " They are good and fat ; " and ran to the arbour to
toast them. If I were there, they invited me to the feast : one
morrow, because the hakim said nay, none any more desired
to eat ; but they cast out their scorched locusts on the sand, in
the sun, where the flies devoured them. — " The jarad, I said,
devour the Beduw, and the Beduw devour the jarad ! " — words
which seemed oracles to that simple audience ; and Salih repeated
KhaliPs proverb in the town.

The poor field labourers of Rasheyd's garden were my friends :
ere the third day, they had forgiven me my alien religion, say-
ing -they thought it might be as good as their own ; and they
would I might live always with them. Ay, quoth the honest
well-driver, " The Nasara are of a godly religion, only they ac-
knowledge not the Rasul ; for they say, Mohammed is a Beduwy
[I thought the poor soul shot not wide from the mark, — Mo-
hammedism is Arabism in religion] : there is no other fault in
them ; and I heard the sheykhs saying this, in the town." —
Some days a dull ' bewitched ' lad laboured here, whom the rest
mocked as Kalitdny — another word of reproach among them [as
much as man-eater], because he was from Khubbera. Other two
were not honest, for they rifled my bags in the night time in
Rasheyd's kasr : they stole sugar — the good Kenneyny's gift ;
and so outrageously ! that they had made an end of the loaf in
few days. A younger son of Rasheyd had a hand in their vil-
lany. The lads were soon after dismissed ; and we heard they
had been beaten by the Emir Aly.

— It was past ten o'clock one of these nights, and dim moon-
light, when Ibrahim and Fahd were ready with the last load of
corn : — then came Ibrahim and said to me, " We are now going
home to stay in the town ; and the jeneyny will be forsaken."
This was a weary tiding of ungenerous Arabs two hours before
midnight when I was about to sleep ! — " What shall I do ? " —
" Go with us ; and we will set thee down at the Kenneyny's
palm-ground, or at his house." — " His jeneyny is open and not
inhabited; and you know that I may not return to the town :
Zamil sent me here." — " Ullah curse both thee and Zamil ! thou
goest with us : come ! or I will shoot thee with a pistol ! [They
now laid my things upon an ass.] — Drive on Fahd ! — Come !
Khalil, here are thieves ; and we durst not leave thee in the
jeneyny alone." — " Why then in Kenneyny's outlying ground ?"
— " By Ullah ! we will forsake thee in the midst of the Nefud ! "
— " If you had warned me to-day, I had sent word to Zamil, and
to Kenneyny : now I must remain here — at least till the morn-

Till'; KA8RA1TS LTKI) if* I

ing." Then the slave snatched my mantle; and in tl:;if lie
struck me on tlio face : lie caught HJ> a heavy stone, and drew
lack In hurl tliis against my head. I knew the dastardly heart
ofthese vmtoihee, the most, kinds of men are not SO

ignoble! — that his wilful stone-cast might cost me one of my
eyes ; and it might cost my life, if I the Nasrany lifted a hand
upon one of the Moslem in ! 1 1 ere were no witnesses of age ; and
(lonl)tless they had concerted their villany beforehand. \VhiUl,
1 felt secn-t.lv in the bags for my pistol, lest I should sec any-
thing worse, I spoke to the lubber 1'Yihd, ' that he should re-
member his father's honour.' A younger son of Kasheyd — the
sugar-thief, braved about the Nasn'my with injuries; and, ere I
was aware in the dark, Ibrahim struck me from behind a second
time with his fist, upon the face and neck. In this by chance
there came to us a young man, from the next plantation. Pie
was a patient of mine ; and hearing how the matter stood, he
said to them, •* Will ye carry him away by night ? and we know
not whither ! Let Khalil remain here at least till the morning."
Ibrahim, seeing I should now be even with him, sought words
to excuse his violence : the slave pretended, that the Nasrany
had snibbed him (a Moslem) saying Laanat Ullah alcyk, ' The
curse of God be upon thee ! ' — And he cried, " Were we here
in Egypt, I had slain thee ! " — Haply he would visit upon the
Nasraoy the outrages of the Suez Canal !

An Aneyza caravan was now journeying from Bosra ; and in
it rode the sire Kasheyd. Siilih was called away the next fore-
noon by a Meteyry ; a man wont to ride post for the foreign
merchants to the north. But in his last coming down he lost
their budget and his own thelul ; for he was resting a day in
the Meteyr men/il, when they were surprised by the murderous
ghrazzu of Kahtiin. He told us, that the foreriders of the
kafily were come in ; and the caravan — which had lodged last
night at Zilfi/, would arrive at midday. This messenger of good
tidings, who had sped from the town, hied by us like a roebuck :
I sat breathless under the sultry clouded heaven, and wondered
at his light running. Ibrahim said, "This Beduwy is nimble,
because of the camel milk which is yet in his bones!" — The
caravan [of more than 200 camels] was fifteen days out from
Bosra ; they had rested every noon-day under awnings.

- The day of the coming again of a great caravan is a day of
feasting in the town. The returned-home are visited by friends
and acquaintance in their houses ; where an afternoon guest-
meal is served. Rasheyd now sat solemnly in that great clay

222 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

beyt, which he had built for himself and the heirs of his body ;
where he received also the friendly visitation of Zamil. He had
brought down seventeen loads (three tons nearly) of clothing,
from his son at Kuweyt, to sell in Aneyza, for a debt of his —
3000 reals — which he must pay to the heirs of a friend deceased,
el-Kdthy. His old servants in this plantation went hastily to
Aneyza to kiss the master's hand: and ere evening portions
were sent out to them from his family supper.

I heard the story of Rasheyd from our well-driver. The
Arabs covet to have many children ; and when his merchandise
prospered, this new man bought him wives ; and ' had the most
years his four women in child at once : and soon after they were
delivered he put out the babes to suck, so that his hareem might
conceive again : since forty years he wrought thus'. — " Rasheyd's
children should be an hundred then, or more ! but how many
has he?" The poor well- driver was somewhat amazed at my
putting him to the count ; and he answered siunply, " But
many of the babes die." The sire, by this butcherly husbandry
in his good days, was now father of a flock ; and, beside his sons,
there were numbered to him fifteen daughters. — In his great
Aneyza household were more than thirty persons.

The third morrow came Rasheyd himself, riding upon a
(Mesopotamian) white ass, from the town, to view his date trees
in Nejd. The old multiplier alighted solemnly and ruffling in his
holiday attire, a gay yellow ^own, and silken kerchief of Bagdad
lapped about his pilled skull. He bore in his belt — as a way-
farer come from his long journey — a kiddamiyyah and a horse-
pistol ; or it might be (since none go armed at home) the old
Tom-fool had armed himself because of the Nasrany ! He was
a comely person of good stature, and very swarthy : his old eyes
were painted. He roamed on his toes in the garden walks, like
the hoopoes, to see his palms and his vetches. Rasheyd came
after an hour to the arbour, where I sat — he had not yet saluted
the kafir ; and sitting down, ' Was I (he asked) that Nasrany ? —
he had heard of me.' I made the old tradesman some tea ; and
it did his sorry heart good to heap in the fenjeyn my egg-great
morsels of sugar. — I regaled him thus as oft as he came hither ;
and I heard the old worldling said at home, ' That Khalil is an
honest person ; and wellah had made him tea with much sugar.'

He said, to soothe my weariness, ' It would not be long,
please Ullah, till I might depart with a kafily.' Then he put
off his gay garments, and went abroad again in his shirt and
cotton cap. — He returned to the arbour in the hot noon ; and
sitting down the old man stripped himself; and having only the
tunic upon his knee, he began to purge his butcher's skin from

IMSI1KVD AM) HIS &

tin- plague of I \irypt accrued in t h.- caravan voyage, lleforethe
half ai'tenux.n lie wandered again in the garden, and communed

with Ilif workmen like ;i, po')r in;ui <>!' tln-ir §OPt, lia.-iheyd

looked upon every one of their tooli, and he \\ >mr\vhat;

himself; :nnl began to cleanse the stinking Led «.f ||J(- ,
Coming a^-ain thirsty, ho went to drink of my girby, which
haii'jin'r to the ;iir upon a palm bnuieh ; ;ind untying the D
he drank liis draught iruin the month, like any poor c»'im»-l-
driver or IJeduwy.- The m;iint • •nance of this outlying posse

him vearly -)|>() reals ; the greater part was forcamel labour.
The tVnits were riot yet fully KO much worth.

No worldly prosperity, nor his much converse abroad, could
gentili/e Ua^heydV i-_rin>blc understanding; he was a Wahftby
after the ^, Nejd fanaticism. A son of this Come-up-

t'romt he-shambles \vas, we saw, the Occidental traveller!
Another son, he who had been the merchant in Aden, came
down with him in the caravan : he opened a shop in the sfdc,
and began selling those camel-loads of clothing stuffs. The
most buyers in the town were now Meteyr tribesmen ; and one
of those " locusts " was so light-handed, that he filched a mantle
of Rasheyd's goods, worth 10s., for which the old man made
fare and chided with his sous. That son arrived one day from
the town, to ask the hakim's counsel ; he was a vile and deceit-
ful person, full of Asiatic fawning promises. 'He would visit
Aden again (for my sake) ; and sail in the same ship with me.
He left a wife there, and a little son ; he had obtained that
his boy was registered a British subject : if I would, he would
accompany me to India.' — I sojourned in his father's plantation ;
and they had not made me coffee.

— 'What, said some one sitting in Easheyd's hall (in the
town), could bring a Nasrany from the magnific cities of
Kuropa into this poor and barren soil of Nejd?' The old
merchant responded, "I know the manners of them ! this is a
Frenjy, and very likely a poor man who has hired out his wife,
to win money against his coming home ; for, trust me, they do
so all of them." — The tale was whispered by his young sons in
thejeneyny : and one afternoon the Shuggery asked me of it
before them all, and added, " But I could not believe it."
" Such imaginations, I exclaimed, could only harbour in the
dunghill heart of a churl ; and be uttered by a slave ! " He
whispered, " Khalil speak not so openly, for here sits his son
(the sugar-thief)! and the boy is a tale-bearer." — When the
Shuggery had excused himself, I asked, " Are ye guiltless of
such disorders ? " He answered, " There are adulteries and
fornication among them, secretly."

224 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

We should think their hareem less modest than precious.
The Arabs are jealous and dissolute ; and every Moslem woman,
since she may be divorced with a word, fears to raise even a
wondering cogitation in such matter. Many poor hareem
could not be persuaded by their nearest friends, who had called
the hakim, to fold down so much of the face-cloth from their
temples as to show me their blear eyes. A poor young creature
of the people was disobedient to her mother, sooner than dis-
cover a painful swelling below the knee. Even aged negro
women [here they go veiled], that were wall-eyed with oph-
thalmia, would not discover their black foreheads in hope of
some relief. And they have pitifully answered for themselves,
' If it be not the Lord's will here, yet should they receive their
sight — where miserable mankind hope to inherit that good
which they have lacked in this world ! — -/' il-jinna in the para-
dise.' Yehya's wife was prudent therein also : for when she had
asked her old lord, she with a modest conveyance through the
side-long large sleeves of the woman's garment, showed her pain-
ful swollen knees to the hakim. This is their strange fashion
of clothing : the woman's sleeves in Kasim are so wonderfully
wide, that if an arm be raised the gown hangs open to the knee.
One must go therefore with needfulness of her poor garment,
holding the sleeves gathered under her arms ; but poor towns-
women that labour abroad and Beduin housewives are often sur-
prised by unseemly accidents. Hareem alone will sit thus in the
sultry heat ; and cover themselves at the approach of strangers.

The days were long till the setting out of the samn caravan :
Zamil had delayed the town expedition, with Meteyr, against
the intruded Kahtan, until the coming home of the great
northern kafily. The caravan for Mecca would not set out till
that contention were determined. To this palm ground, two
and a half miles from Aneyza, there came none of my acquaint-
ance to visit the Nasrany. Their friendship is like the voice of
a bird upon the spray : if a rumour frighten her she will return
no more. I had no tidings of Bessam or of Kenneyny ! Only
from time to time some sick persons resorted hither, to seek
counsel of the hakim ; who told me the Kenneyny sent them or
Zamil, saying, " In Khalil's hand is a bdraka ; and it may be
that the Lord will relieve thee."

The small-pox was nearly at an end in the town. Salih
had lost a fair boy, a grief which he bore with the manly short
sorrow of the Moslemin. A daughter of Kenneyny died ; and
it was unknown to him, three days ! — till he enquired for her :
then they of his household and his friends said to him, " The
Lord has taken the child ; and yesterday we laid her in the,

" \\KAIM\KSS AND II'

Hut Abdullah blamed them with ;L .-..rrnwf'ul S6Yerl
''•Oli! wherefore. In- said, did y« QO( I'll me?" — at least he
would have seen her dead face. It paim-d me also was

not called, — L might have been a mean to save IPT. *

* * * When I had been more than three weeks in this

(Isolation, I wrote on a lea.f of paper, katdlny et-tcwl> vn 'j-jft'a,
* I am slain with weariness and hunger ' ; and sent these words
to Keuueyny. — I hoped ere long to remove, with Zamil's allow-
ance, to some of the friends' grounds; were it Bessimi'.s
jeneyny, on the north-east part of the town [there is tin- />/>"•/,•
,s/o//r, mentioned by some of their ancient poets, and 'whereof,
they say, Aney/a itself is named '] ; or the palms of the L
father Yah\a, so kind to my guiltlesa cause. My message, was
delivered : ami at sunrise on the morrow came Abdullah's
serving lad, who brought girdle-bread and butter, with a skin
of butter-milk ; and his master's word bidding me be of good
comfort ; and they (the friends) woidd ere long be able to
provide for my departure. — I could not obtain a little butter-
milk (the wine of this languishing country) from the town.
Salih answered, 'That though some hareem might be secretly
milk-sellers in Aneyza, yet could not he, nor any of his house-
hold, have an hand in procuring it forme.' Some poor families
of Meteyr came to pitch by the water-pits of abandoned stubbles
nigh us ; and I went out to seek a little milk of them for dates
or medicines. Their women wondered to see the (English)
colour of the stranger's hair; and said one to another, ''Is this
a grey -haired man, that has tinged his beard with saffron?"-
" Nay, thou niayest see it is his nature ; this is certainly a red-
man, mill }t<Sl shottilt, from those rivers (of Mesopotamia); and
have we not seen folk there of this hue ? — but where, 0 man, is
thy beled ? "

The sheukh of Meteyr were now in Aneyza, to consult finally
with Zamil and the sheykhs for the common warfare. The
Kahtan thought themselves secure, in the khala, that no towns-
folk would ride against them in this burning season ; and as for
el-Meteyr, they set little by them as adversaries. — Zamil sent
word to those who had theluls in the town, to be ready to
mount with him on the morrow. He had " written " for this
expedition " six hundred " theluls. The ghrazzu of the con-
federate Beduw was "three hundred theluls, and two hundred
(led) horses ".

The day after el-Meteyr set forward at mid-afternoon. But
Zamil did not ride in one company with his nomad friends :
the Beduins, say the townspeople, are altogether deceitful — as

VOL. n. p

226 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

we have seen in the defeat of Saiid the Wahaby. And I heard
that some felony of the Aarab had been suffered two years
before by Aneyza ! It is only Ibn Rashid, riding among the
rajajil and villagers, who may foray in assurance with his
subject Beduw.

Zamil rode out the next day, with " more than a thousand "
of the town : and they say, " When Zamil mounts, Aneyza is
confident." He left Aly to govern at home : and the shops in
the suk were shut ; there would be no more buying or selling,
till the expedition came home again. The morning market is
not held, nor is any butcher's meat killed in these days. Al-
though so many were in the field with Zamil, yet ' the streets,
said Salih, seemed full of people, so that you should not miss
them ' ! I enquired, " And what if anyone open his dokan — ? "
Answer: " The emir Aly would send to shut it : but if he per-
sisted such an one would be called before the emir, and beaten : "
only small general shops need not be closed, which are held by
any old broken men or widows.

The Emir writes the names of those who are to ride in a
ghrazzu ; they are mostly the younger men of households able
to maintain a thelul. Military service falls upon the substantial
citizens — since there can be no warfaring a-foot in the khala :
we hear not that the Wahaby, poor in all military discipline,
had ever foot soldiers. The popular sort that remain at home,
mind their daily labour ; and they are a guard for the town.
The Emir's sergeant summons all whose names have been
enrolled to mount with Zamil (on the morrow). Two men ride
upon a warfaring thelul; the radif is commonly a brother, a
cousin, or client [often a Beduwy] or servant of the owner. —
If one who was called be hindered, he may send another upon
his dromedary with a backrider. If he be not found in the
muster with the Emir, and have sent none in his room, it may
be overlooked in a principal person ; but, in such case, any of
the lesser citizens might be compelled. Zamil was an easy
man to excuse them who excused themselves ; for if one said,
" Wellah, Sir, for such and such causes, I cannot ride," the
Emir commonly answered him, " Stay then."

Ib was falsely reported that the Kenneyny was in the expedi-
tion. The infirm man sent his two theluls with riders (which
may be found among the poor townsmen and Beduins). None
of Rasheyd's sons were in the field : Salih said, " We have
two cousins that have ridden for us all." — A kinsman of Zamil,
who was with him, afterward told me their strength was 800
men, and the Meteyr were 300. Some said, that Aneyza sent
200 theluls, that is 400 riders ; others said 500 men. — We may

WAR AGAINST THE KAHTAN 227

mv that /<;imil railed fur -Ini) fhrli'd.- of flu1, town ; and
then' went forth L'nO, with |i)D men. which were ;ilnmt ;i. thir<l
of ail t he grown male eiti/ens ; and <>f M> irly 150

tribesmen. With the town were not above 20 led n
sheykhly persons, Kalif.-'m \\viv reckoned (in tln-ir double-
seeing wise) 800 men ; perhaps they were as many as 400, but
(as southern Aarab) possessing few firearms. They had i
horses, and were rich in great cattle: it was reported, 'Their
mares were 150 '; but say they had 70 horses.

The townsmen rode in three troops, with the ensigns of the
throe groat wards of Aiiey/a ; but the town banners are five or
, when there is warfare at home.

Marly in the afternoon i heard this parley in the gard-n,
between F£hd and a poor Meteyry, — who having no thelfd
could not follow with his tribesmen. Fdhd : " By this they are
well in the way ! and please Ullah they will bring back the heads
of them."—" Please Ullah ! the Lord is bountiful ! and kill the
children from two years old and upward ; and the hareem shall
lament!" I said to them, " Hold your mouths, kafirs! and
worse than kafirs." The Beduwy : "But the Kalitan killed our
children — they killed even women ! " The Meteyr were come
in to encamp nigh the town walls ; and two small menzils of
theirs were now Our neighbours. These southern Aarab were
such as other Beduw. I heard in their mouths the same nomad
Arabic ; yet I could discern that they were of foreign diras. I
saw their -jirbies suspended in cane-stick trivets. Some of them
came to me for medicines : they seemed not to be hospitable ;
they saw me tolerated by Zamil, and were not fanatical.

In these parts the town-dwellers name themselves to the
Aarab, and are named of them again, cl-Moslemm, — a word
used like Ci-ixlin/ti in the priests'-countries of Europe; first
to distinguish the human generation, and then in an illiberal
strait/ness of the religious sense. One day I saw camels feeding
towards the Wady ; and in the hope of drinking milk I adven-
tured barefoot to them, over Rasheyd's stubbles and the glow-
ing sand : and hailed the herdsmen ! The weleds stood still ;
and when I came to them they said, after a little astonishment,
" The nagas, 0 man, are not in milk nor, billah, our own : these
<e town camels ; and we are herding them for the Moslem in."
One said, " Auh ! be'st thou the hakim? wilt thou give me a
nit -dicine ? — And if thou come to our booths when the cattle are
watered, I will milk for thee mine own naga ; and I have but
her : were our cattle here, the Beduius would milk for thee
daily." — The long day passed ; then another, which seemed

WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

without end ; and a third was to me as three days : it had been
told me, ' that my friends were all in the ghrazzu ', — and now
Aly reigned in the town ! Salih bade me be easy ; but fair
words in the Arabs are not to trust : they think it pious to
persuade a man to his rest.

Tidings of this foray came to Boreyda, and messengers rode
out to warn the Kahtan. Zamil made no secret of the town
warfare, which was not slackness in such a politic man, but his
long-suffering prudence. * He would give the enemies time, said
Salih, to sue for peace ' : — how unlike the hawks of er-Riath
and Jebel Shammar !

— The Kahtan were lately at el-'Ayttn ; and the ghrazzu held
thither. But in the way Zamil heard that their menzils were
upon cd-Ddlamicli, a water between the mountain Sak and er-
Russ. The town rode all that day and much of the night also.
By the next afternoon they were nigh er-Russ ; and alighted
to rest, and pitched their (canvas) tents and (carpet) awnings.
Now they heard that the enemy was upon the wells Ddkhany,
a march to the southward. As they rode on the morrow they
met bye and bye with the Meteyr; and they all alighted to-
gether at noon. — The scouts of Meteyr brought them word, that
they had seen the booths of the Aarab, upon Ddkhany ! and so
many they could be none other than the Kahtan ; who might
be taken at unawares ! — The young litterates of Aneyza boasted
one to another at the coffee fires, " We shall fight then to-
morrow upon the old field of Jebel Kezdz, by Ddkhany ; where the
Tubb'a (lord the king, signeur) of el-Yemen fought against the
Wdilyin (sons of Wail, that is the Annezy), — Koleyl, slieykh
Rabi'a ; and with them B. Temim and Keys " [Kahtan against
Ishmael : — that was little before the hejra]. The berg Kezazis
f an hour ' from the bed of the Wady er-Rummah.

Zamil and the town set forward on the morrow, when the
stars were yet shining : the Meteyr had mounted a while before
them, and Dokhany was at little distance. In this quarrel it
was the Beduins which should fall upon their capital foemen ;
and Zamil would be at hand to support them. The town fetched
a compass to envelope Kahtan from the southward.

Meteyr came upon their enemies as the day lightened : the
Kahtan ran from the beyts, with their arms, sheykhs leapt upon
their mares ; and the people encouraged themselves with shout-
ing. Then seeing they were beset by Meteyr they contemned
them, and cried, jab-hum Ullah, " A godsend ! " — but this was
a day of reckoning upon both parts to the dreary death. The

BATTLE OF METEYR AND K AH 220

Meteyr had "two hundred" man-s under them ; hut. they were

of the IMS esteemed northern limod. 'Y\\e> Kahatln in the be-
ginning were sixty horse-riders. Then thirty more horsemen
joined tlirm from another great, men/il of theirs pitched at
'little distance. Tim Kahtan were now more than the gliraz/u
of Meteyr, who finally gave ground.

— Then fust the Kahtan looked nhout them ; and were ware
of the town bands coming on! The Kahatin, of whom not,
many were fallen, shouted one to another, in suspense of h-
" Ki-h ! is it Ihn Rash id?— but no! for Ibn Kashid i-ides with
one hfirak: but these ride like townsfolk. — Ullah ! they are
Juithr!" — Now as the town approached some knew them, and
cried, "These be the Kusmfm! — they are the ZuAmil (/;imils,
or the people of /amil)." When they saw it was so, they
hasted to save their milch-camels.

— /.iniil, yet distant, seeing Beduin horsemen driving off the
camel-, exclaimed, " Are not these the Moslemin [those of our
part] ? " " Nay ! answered him a sheykh of Meteyr (who came
riding with the town to be a shower of the way in the khalaj,
they are billah el-Kahtfm " ! The town cavaliers were too few to
gallop out against them. And now the Kahtan giving them-
selves to save the great cattle forsook their menzil : where they
left booths, household stuff, and wives and children in the power
of their foe in en.

The horsemen of Meteyr pursued the flying Kahtan ; who
turned once more and repulsed them : then the Aneyza cavaliers
sallied to sustain their friends. The rest of the Meteyr, who
alighted, ran in to spoil the enemies' tents. — And he and he,
whose house-wives were lately pierced with the spears of
Kahtan, or whose babes those fiend-like men slew, did now the
like by their foemen ; they thrust through as many hareem,
and slit the throats of their little ones before the mothers'
faces, crying to them, "Oh, wherefore did your men so with
our little ones the other day ! " Some frantic women ran on
the spoilers with tent-staves ; and the Meteyries, with weapons
in their hands, and in the tempest of their blood, spared them
not at all. — Thus there perished live or six wives, and as many
children of Kahhin.

In their most tribulation a woman hid her husband's silver,
600 reals [that was very much for any Beduwy] ! in a girbv ;
and stript off her blue smock — all they wear besides the h.-iir-ju
on their hunger-starved bodies : and hanging the water-skin on
her shoulder, she set her little son to ride upon the other.
Then she ran from her tent with a lamentable cry, u'ei/liij,
weyUy / woe is me ! and fled naked through the tumult of the

230 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

enemies. The Meteyr, who saw it, supposed that one of the
people had spoiled the woman, and thought shame to follow
her ; yet some called to her, to fling down that she bore on her
shoulder : but she, playing the mad woman, cried out, ' She
was undone ! — was it not enough to strip a sheykh's daughter ?
and would they have even this water, which she carried for the
life of her child ! ' Others shouted, to let the woman pass :
and she fled fast, and went by them all ; — and saved her good-
man's fortune, with this cost of his wife's modesty.

There fell thirty men of Kahtan, — the most were slain in the
flight ; and of Meteyr ten. — These returned to bury their dead :
but the human charity is here unknown to heap a little earth
over the dead foemen !

A woman messenger came in from the flying Kahtan, to
Zamil. The town now alighted at the wells (where they would
rear up the awnings and drink coffee) : she sought safe conduct
for some of their sheykhs, to come and speak with him ; which
Zamil granted. — Then the men returned and kissing him as
suppliants, they entreated him, ' since their flocks, and the
tents and stuff, were now (as he might see) in the hands of
Meteyr, to suffer them to come to the water, that they might
drink and not perish.' They had sweated for their lives, and
that summer's day was one of greatest heat ; and having no
girbies, they must suffer, in flying through the desert, an
extremity of thirst. But who might trust to words of Beduin
enemies ! and therefore they bound themselves with a solemn
oath, — Aleijk dhad UllaTi iva aman Ullah, in md akhunaJc ! el-
kh&yin yakhdnhu Ullali — "The covenant of the Lord be with
thee, and His peace ! I will not surely betray thee ! who
betrayeth, the Lord shall him betray."

Such was the defeat of the intruded Kahtan, lately formid-
able even to Ibn Rashid. Ibn Saud had set upon them last
summer here at Dokhany ! but the Kahtan repulsed the decayed
Wahaby ! — This good success was ascribed to the fortune of
Zamil : the townsmen had made no use of their weapons. The
Meteyr sent messengers from the field to Ibn Rashid, with a
gift of two mares out of the booty of Kahtan. — Even Boreyda
would be glad, that the malignant strange tribesmen were cast
out of the country. — Many Kahtan perished in their flight
through the khala : even lighter wounds, in that extremity of
weariness and thirst, became mortal. They fled southward
three days, lest their old foes, hearing of their calamity, should
fall upon them : we heard, that some Ateyba had met with
them, and taken " two hundred " of the saved milch camels.
Certain of them who came in to el-Ethellah said, that they

nivvm <»!•' n \\ /

wen- de t roved and had lofll 'an hundred IIM-M ' :

the\ bnuglit tin* tin'*' pa -I | now two full years] of their pin-.

the wolf in N'-jd !

When I asked what would become of the Kalit
Slmggerv answered, " The Ueduw are hounds, — that die not;
and these are shryatin. They will find twenty shifts; and
after a year or two In- in good plight again." — " What can
they do now?" — "They will milk the migas for fond, and
sell some camels in the villages, to buy themselves dates and
cooking vessels. And they will not be long-time lodged on
the ground, without shelter from the sun : for the hareem
will shear the cattle that remain to them, and spin day and
night; and in few weeks set up their new woven booths!
besides the other Kahtan in the south will help them."— -We
heard after this, that the defeated Kahtan had made peace
with the Ateyban ; and reconciled themselves with Ibn
Sand ! But how might they thus assure themselves ? had
the Kahtan promised to be confederate with them against Ibn
Kashid ?

— Hayzan was fallen ! their young Absalom ; ' a young man
of a thievish false nature,' said his Beduin foes : it was he who
threatened me, last year, in a guest-chamber at Hayil : Hayzan
was slain for that Meteyry sheykh, who lately fell by his hand
in the north. A sheykhly kinsman of the dead sought him in
the battle : they ran together ; and Hayzan was borne through
the body with a deadly wide wound. The young man was very
robust for a Beduwy, and his strong hand had not swerved ;
but his lance-thrust was fended by a shirt of mail which his
foemen wore privily under his cotton tunic. That Meteyry was
a manly rider upon a good horse, and after Hayzan, he bore
down other five sheykhs. — When the fortune of the day was
determined by the coming of " the Zuamil," he with his brother
and his son, yet a stripling [principal sheykhs' sons soon be-
come horsemen, and ride with their elders to the field], and a
few of his Aarab, made prize of eighty milch camels ! In that
day he had been struck by lances and shot in the breast, eleven
times ; but the dints pierced not his " Davidian " shirt of
antique chain work. They say, that the stroke of a gun-shot
leaves upon the body fenced by such harness, only a grievous
bruise.

A brother of Hayzan, Terkey, was fallen ; and their sheykhly
sister. She was stripped, and thrust through with a spear ! —
because Kahtan had stripped and slain a Meteyry sheykh's
daughter. The old Kahtan sheykh — father of these eviUstarred

232 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

brethren, hardly escaped upon a thelul. Hayzan, mortally
wounded, was stayed up in the saddle, in the flight, till even-
ing ; and when they came to the next golbdn (south of Dokhany,)
the young sheykh gave up the ghost : and his companions cast
his warm body into one of those well-pits.

In the Kahtan camp was found a poor foreigner, — a young
Moghreby derwish ! who committed himself to the charity of
the townspeople. In the last pilgrimage he came to Mecca ;
and had afterward joined himself to a returning kafily of
Kusman, hoping to go up from their country to el-Irak. But
as they marched he was lost in that immense wilderness : and
some wandering Kahtan found him, — what sweetness to be
found, in such extreme case, by the hand of God's providence !
Yet the Kahtan, who saved him, not regarding the religious
bounty of the desert, made the young Moor their thrall; and
constrained him to keep sheep : and as often as they approached
any village they bound him, that he should not escape them. —
They had so dealt with me, and worse, if (which I once purposed)
I had journeyed with some of them. — The returning " Moslemin"
brought the young Moghreby with them to Aneyza, where he
remained a guest in the town, until they might send him for-
ward. He had been with Kahtan since the winter, and said
with simplicity, " I knew not that life, but they made me a
Beduwy, and wellah I am become a Beduwy." — And in truth if
one live any time with the Aarab, he will have all his life after
a feeling of the desert.

— The fifth evening we saw a nomad horseman on the brow
of the Nefud, who descended to the booths : that was the first
of them who returned from the warfare. Zamil and the town
came again on the morrow; and we heard them, riding home
under our horizon, more than two hours, with a warlike beating
of tamburs ; they arrived, in three troops, under their banners.
All the Beduins came not yet : there was a wrangling among
them — it is ever so, in the division of the booty. A Beduwy
will challenge his own wheresoever he find it; and as Meteyr
had been lately " taken " in the north by Kahtan, many a man
lighted on his own cattle again, in the hand of a tribesman. The
same afternoon we saw sheep driven in : they were few, and the
most of them had been their own. Those who now returned
from the battle brought heavy tidings, — six men were fallen of
the menzils nigh us ! that were thirty households. As they
heard it, the house-wives of the dead ran forth wailing, and
overthrew their widowed booths. The Beduins removed when
the morrow lightened, and returned to the khala. — This was

THE COMING-AGAIX <>F JESUS 233

he calamity of Kahfan ! and there was peace between Boreyda

and Aney/a.

Now in Aneyza the jemamil made ready their gear ; for the
satiui kalily was soon to set out for Mecca. The temmel, Ix-ar-
ing Camels, w»-re iVtrhed in from tin- nomads; and we saw them
daily reaming at pasture in the Nefud about us. A caravan
departed in these days with dates and corn for Medina.

/aniil and Kenneyny rode out one day to the Wady together,
where /junil has a possession ; and they proposed to return by
Rasheyd's plantation, to visit Khalil. But in the hot noon tln-v
napped under tlie palms: Abdullah woke quaking with agin- !
and they rode the next way home.

One evening there came a company of young patricians from
Aney/a; to see some sheep of theirs, which the Beduin h< rds
had brought in, with a disease in the fleece. The gallants
stripped oll'gay kerchiefs and mantles; and standing in the well-
troughs, they themselves washed their beasts. When it was
night, they lay down on the Nefud sand to sleep, before the
shepherds' tents. Some of them were of the fanatical Bessams ;
and with these came a younger son of the good Abdullah. The
lad saluted me alfectuously from his father; who sent me word,
' that the kafily would set out for Mecca shortly; and I should
ride with Abd-er-Rahmau (his elder son) ' ; I had languished
now six weeks in Rasheyd's plantation.

Kre they departed on the morrow, one of the young fanatical
Hess-ams said to me: — " Oh that thou wouldst believe in Mo-
hammed! Khalil, is it true, that ye are daily looking for the
coming again of theMessih, from heaven ? and if Aysa bid thee
then believe on Mohammed, wilt thou obey him, and be a
Moslem ? But I am sure that the Lord Aysa will so command
thee ! I would that he may come quickly ; and we shall see
it ! ' —The same day there visited us the two young men of
Rasheyd's kindred that had ridden in the ghrazzu : they were
very swarty, and plainly of the servile blood. One of them,
who had been an Ageyly in Damascus, told me that he lately
bought a horse of perfect form and strength in el- Yemen, for
live hundred reals; and he hoped to sell him in es-Sham for
as much again. Coffee was prepared for any who visited the
jeneyny, by the young sons of Rasheyd ; and in these days — the
last in June — they brought cool clusters of white grapes, which
ripening in the vine.

The great sheykh of Meteyr also visited me : he was sent by
Xamil. Though under the middle age, he began to have the
dropsy, and could not suffer a little fatigue: the infirm man

34 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

came riding softly upon a carpet, which was' bound in his
thelul-saddle. The istiska is better known as a horse sickness
among them : he knew not what ailed him, — have not all men
a good understanding of the diseases and nurture of their cattle
rather than of themselves and their children ! he received my
word with a heavy-heart. The horse sweats much, and is not
less than man impatient of thirst : and the beginning of this
evil may be, in both, a surfeit of cold water in a chilled skin.
When he heard his malady would be long he said, " Ya Khalil !
wilt thou not go with us ? henna rahil, the Aarab journey to-
morrow (to their summer dira, in the north): thou shalt lodge
in my booth ; and they will serve thee well. We will milk for
the'e : and when thou hast cured me I will also reward thee."-
" Have patience in God ! " — •" I know that the blessing is from
Ullah ; but come Khalil : thou wilt be in surety with us ; and I
will send thee again to Aneyza, or if it like thee better to Kuwey t
or to Bosra." — " I am shortly to set out with the samn caravan."
— " Well, that will be — we heard it now in the town — the ninth
day from to-day ; come with us, and I will send thee ere that
day : thereto I plight my faith." — It had been pleasant, in this
stagnant heat, to breathe the air of the kbalaand be free again,
among the Aarab; and regaled with leban I might recover
strength. I sent therefore to ask counsel of the Kenneyny :
and my friend wrote again that I could adventure with them.
Bat the time was short, and I durst not trust in the Beduin
faith.

I had passed many days of those few years whose sum is our
human life, in Arabia ; and was now at the midst of the Penin-
sula. A month! — and I might be come again to European
shipping. From hence to the coast may be counted 450 desert
miles, a voyage of at least twenty great marches in the uneasy
camel-saddle, in the midsummer flame of the sun ; which is a
suffering even to the homeborn Arabs. Also my bodily languor
was such now, that I might not long sit upright ; besides I fore-
saw a final danger, since I must needs leave the Mecca kafily at
a last station before the (forbidden) city. There was come upon
me besides a great disquietude : for one day twelve months
before, as I entered a booth (in Wady Thirba), in the noon heat,
when the Nomads slumber, I had been bitten by their grey-
hound, in the knee. I washed the wound ; which in a few
days was healed, but a red button remained ; which now (justly
at the year's end) broke, and became an ulcer ; then many like
ulcers rose upon the lower limbs (and one on the wrist of the
left hand). — Ah ! what horror, to die like a rabid hound in a
hostile land,

MOWS IWOM TMK <;<><>[> HMSSA.M

friends Kenneyny an. I ,-d a tln-lnl, in tin-

1-Yiday market, for my riding down to -Jidda, win-re, tli" beast,
they thought, might feteh M nincli B

one of their kinsmen, who was to come up I'n.m .lidd;i. in
returning kidily would ride home upon li'-r. I >>n a

letter from the good llesxmi : 'All (he wrote) is ready; but,
because df tin* uncivil miud [\Vah;it>v malice] of tin- people he
would not, now be, able to send me in liis son's company ! I mn-t
excuse it. Hut tliey had provided that, I should ride in tin-
company of Sleyiuan el- Keniiryny, to whom 1 might looi.
that which was needful [water, cooking, and the noon shelter |
by the way.' — He ended in m| nesting me to send back a little
(piinine : and above his seal was written — " God's blessing be
with all the faithful Moslemin."

I sent to Zsimil asking that it might be permitted me to come
one day to town, to purchase somewhat for the journey, and
bid my friends farewell: but my small request could not be
vouchsafed, — so much of the Wahaby misery is in the good
people of Aneyza.

The husbandmen of the garden — kind as the poor are kind,
when they went into Aneyza on Fridays, purchased necessary
things for me : the butcher's family showed me no hospitable
service. — Hamed el-Yehya came one of these last evenings, to
visit me, riding upon his mare. This first of my returning
friends — a little glozing in his words, excused himself, that he
had not come sooner to see me. The hakim being now about
to depart, he would have medicines for his mother, who sent me
his saddlebag-ful of a sort of ginger cakes (which they prepare
for the caravan journeys), and scorched gobbets of fresh meat,
that will last good a month. Hamed was a manly young
franklin with fresh looks, the son of his mother — but also the
son of his father, of great strength, of an easy affectuous nature,
inclined to be gentle and liberal : his beard was not yet begun
to spring. The old mare was his own : to be a horseman also
belongeth to nobility. He came well clad, as when these towns-
men ride abroad ; his brave silken kerchief was girded with the
head-band and perfumed with attar of rose, from Mecca. The
young cavalier led a foal with him, which he told me he found
tied in a Kahtan booth : Hamed brought the colt home ; and
said, excusing himself, * that it had otherwise perished ! ' The
colt now ran playing after the dry mare, as if she were his
kindly dam. The mare had adopted the strange foal! and
wreathing back her neck she gazed for him, and snorted softly
with affection.

We supped together ; and Hamed told of their meeting with

236 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

the Kahtan. He rode upon his mare, armed with a (Frankish)
double gun ; but complained to me that one on horseback could
not re-load. This was, I answered, their loose riding upon a pad
(madrakka) ; I bade him use stirrups, and he held it a good
counsel. — Such was the dust of the battle, that Hamed could
not number the Kahtan tents, which he supposed might be 300.
The Mecca caravans pass by Dokhany ; but this year he said we
should shun it, because of the fetor of the unburied carcases (of
Kahtan). I enquired, if the kafily marched through all the day's
heat ! — " Nay, for then the (molten) samn might leak through
the butter-skins." He thought we should journey by night, for
fear of Kahtan ; and that our kafily would be joined at er-Russ
with the butter convoy descending from Boreyda. He sat on
another hour with me, in the moonlight: Hamed would not, he
protested, that our friendship were so soon divided, — after my
departure we might yet write one to the other. So mounting
again, he said, 'he would ride out to the gathering place of the
kafily to bid me God-speed, on the day of our departure ' : — but
I met with him no more.

It is the custom in these countries, that all who are to
journey in a kafily should assemble at a certain place, without
the town : where being mustered by the vigil of the day of their
departure ; when the sun is risen they will set forth.

CHAPTER XII

OIT FROM KL-KAS1M, WITH THE BUTTER CAKAYAN
lull MECCA

ON tln» morrow, when the sun was setting1, there came a mes-
srngiT I'm- nu1, from Abdullah cl-Kciuicyny ; with the thelui
upon which I should ride to Jiddn. \\'e mounted ; and Kaslirvd's
labomvrs wlio liad left their day's toil, and the poor slave woman,
approached to take my hand ; and they blessed me as we rode
forth. We held over to the Kenueyny's plantation : where I
heard I should pass the morrow. The way was not two miles ;
but we arrived, after the short twilight, in the dark : there my
rafik forsook me ; and I lay down in that lonely palm ground to
sleep, by the well side.

At the sun-rising I saw Abdullah el-Kenneyny ! who arrived
riding upon an ass, before the great heat. A moment later
came Abdullah el-Bessam, on foot: " Ah ! Khalil, said he,
taking my hand, we are abashed, for the things thou hast
suffered, and that it should have been here! but thou knowest
we were overborne by this foolish people." Kennoyny asked for
more of that remedy which was good for his mother's eyes ; and
I distributed to them my medicines. Now came Hamed es-Safy ;
and these friends sat on with me till the sun was half an hour
high, when they rose to return to breakfast, saying they would
see me later. In the afternoon came es-Safy again ; who would
perfect his writing of English words. — None of my other friends
and acquaintance came to visit the excommunicated Nasrany.

The good Kenneyny arrived again riding upon the ass, in
the cooling of the afternoon, with his son Mohammed. He was
feeble to-day, as one who is spent in body and spirit ; and I
saw him almost trembling, whilst he sat to talk with me : and
the child playing and babbling about us, Abdullah bade him be
still, for he could not bear it. I entreated him to forget what-
soever inquietude my coming to Aneyza had caused him : he
made no answer.

238 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

It was now evening ; and Sleyman arrived, upon a thelul,
with his little son. He was riding-by to the caravan meuzil,
and would speak the last words with his kinsman, who lent him
money for this traffic. Abdullah called to him, to set down
the child ; and take up Khalil and his bags. — I mounted with
Sleyman ; and we rode through a breach of the town wall,
which bounded Kenneyny's tillage. Abdullah walked thus far
with us : and here we drew bridle to take leave of him : I gave
hearty thanks, with the Semitic blessings ; and bade this gentle
and beneficent son of Temim a long farewell. He stood sad
and silent : the infirm man's mortal spirit was cut off (Cruel
stars !) from that Future, wherefore he had travailed — and which
we. should see ! [Three months later Abdullah el-Kenneyny
went down in the pilgrimage to Mecca : and returned, by sea,
to Bosra. But his strength failed him ; and he sought in vain
a better air at Abu Shahr^ on the Persian Coast. — In the sum-
mer of the third year after, Sleyman, a younger son of Abdullah
el-Bessam. wrote to me, from Jidda ; " Poor el-Kenneyny died
some months ago, to our grief, at Bosra : he was a good man
and very popular."]

We went on riding an hour or two in that hollow roadway
worn in the Nefud, by which I had once journeyed in the night-
time in the way to Khubbera. It was dark when we came to
the caravan menzil ; where Sleyman hailed his drivers, that had
arrived before us, with the loads. They brought us to our place
in the camp ; which, for every fellowship, is where they have
alighted and couched their camels. Here was a coffee fire, and
I saw Sleyman's goat-skins of samn (which were twenty-four or
one ton nearly) laid by in order : four of them, each of fifteen
sah (of el-Kasim), are a camel's burden, worth thirty reals, for
which they looked to receive sixty in Mecca. — Many persons
from Aneyza were passing this last night in the camp with their
outfaring friends and brethren. This assembling place of the
Mecca kafily is by the outlying palms 'Auhellan ; where are
said to be certain ancient caves hewn in the sand-rock ! I only
then heard of it, and time was not left me to search out the
truth in the matter.

— But now I learned, that no one in the caravan was going
to Jidda ! they were all for Mecca. Abdullah el-Kenneyny
had charged Sleyman; and the good Bessam had charged his
son (AM-er-Eahman) for me, that at the station next before
Mecca [whether in Wady Laymun, or the Seyl] they should
seek an 'adamy, to convey me (without entering the hadud^or
sacred limit) to Jidda. — The good Kenneyny, who had never

TI1K r.Ml.U'AX ( OMI'ANY 239

ridden on pilgrimage, ooald not know th per-

spieiious mind «lid nut !'• . lina! p'-iil, in that pMM

In our butter U;ilil\ irwe 17" camels, — bearing m
tons of samn — and seynit y men, of whom forty rode on tin-lids,

(In- n»si, irere driver*. We ireve sorted in small companies;

v master with Ids friends ami hired servants. In
fellowship is carried a tent or awning, for a shelter over their
heads at the noon stations, and to shadow the sarnn, — that is
molten in the goat-skins (/>/•///, pi. j. rinn) in the hot hours: the
j< rri in must be thickly smeared within with date syrup, i
skinful, the best part of an hundredweight, is Mi-pended by a
loop (made fast at the two ends) from the saddle-tree. S
times a jenn burst H in the caravan journeys, and the precious
humour is poured out like water upon the dust of the khala :
somewhiles the bearing-camels thrust by acacia trees, and jerms
are pricked and ripped by the thorny boughs. It was well that
there rode a botcher in the kafily ; who in the evening station
amended the daily accidents to butter-skins and girbies. — All
this samn, worth more than £2000 in Mecca, had been taken
up, since the spring, in their traffic with the Beduw : the
Aneyza merchants store it for the time in marble troughs.

There is an emir, named by Zamil, over such a great town
caravan : he is one of the princely kin ; and receives for every
camel a real. — El-Kenneyny had obtained a letter from Zamil,
commending me to the emir ; and charging him to provide for
my safety, when I should leave the kafily " at the Ayn". — We
sat on chatting about the coffee fire, till we were weary ; and
then lay down to sleep there, on the Nefud sand.

Kising with the dawn, there was yet time to drink coffee.
The emir and some young Aneyza tradesmen in Mecca, that
would return with the kafily, had remained all night in the
town : they would overtake us riding upon their fleet fomani<<s.
[Thetheluls of the Gulf province 'Oman or ' Aman' are of great
force and stature ; but less patient of famine and thirst than
some lesser kinds. A good 'omania, worth 50 to 70 reals at
Aneyza, may hardly be bought in the pilgrim season at Mecca —
where they are much esteemed — for 150 reals.] When the sun
was up the caravaners loaded, and set forward. We soon after
fell into the Wady er-Kummah ; in which we journeyed till two
hours before noon : and alighted on a shaeb, cs-Shilbebieh, to
rest out the midday heat (yugi/ililn). In that place are some
winter granges of Aneyza, of ruinous clay building, with high-
walled yards. They are inhabited by well-drivers' families, from
the autumn seed time till the early harvest. Here we drew

240 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

brackish water, and filled our girbies. The day's sultry heat
was great; and I found under the awnings 105° F. Principal
persons have canvas tents made Beduin-wise, others have awn-
ings of Bagdad carpets. I saw but one or two round tents —
bargains from the coast, and a few ragged tilts of hair-cloth
[that I heard were of the Kahtan booty !] in poorer fellow-
ships.— Sleyman el-Kenneyny's six loads of samn were partly
Abdullah's : he was a jemmal, and the beasts were his own.

It might be three o'clock ere they removed, — and the hot
sun was going down from the meridian : the signal is made with
a great shout of the Emir's servant, ES-sm-iL ! In the next
instant all awnings are struck, the camels are led-in and couched,
the caravaners carry out the heavy butter-skins ; and it is a
running labour, with heaving above their strength, to load on
their beasts, before the kafily is moving : for the thelul riders
are presently setting forth ; and who is unready will be left in
the hindward. The emir's servant stands like a shepherd before
the kafily — spreading his arms to withhold the foremost! till
the rest shall be come up : or, running round, he cries out on
the disobedient. Now they march ; and — for the fear of the
desert — the companies journey nigh together. Our path south-
ward was in the Wady Rummah, which is a wide plain of firmer
sand in the Nefud. The Aban mountains are in sight to the
westward, covered with haze. [The Abanat maybe seen, lifted
up in the morning twilight, from the dunes about Aneyza.] At
sun-setting we alighted by other outlying granges — that are of
er-Russ, el-Hajnowwy, without the Wady : we were there nearly
abreast of Khubbera.

Their tents are not pitched at night ; but in each company
the awning is now a sitting carpet under the stars ; and it will
be later for the master to lie on. One in every fellowship who is
cook goes out to gather sticks for fuel ; another leads away the
beasts to browse, for the short half-hour which rests till it is dark
night. With Sleyman went three drivers: the first of them,
a poor townsman of Aneyza, played the cook in our company ;
another was a Beduwy. — After an hour, the supper dish (of
seethed wheaten stuff) is set before us. Having eaten, we sip
coffee : they sit somewhile to chat and drink tobacco ; and
then wrapt in our cloaks we lie down on the sand, to sleep out
the short hours which remain till toward sunrising.

An hour before the dawn we heard shouted, * THE REMOVE ! '
The people rise in haste ; the smouldering watch-fires are
blown to a flame, and more sticks are cast on to give us light :
there is a harsh hubbub of men labouring ; and the ruckling
and braying of a multitude of camels. Yet a minute or two,

Klf I? I 241

and all is up: rider .: ;nv mounted ; and fli.-y which remain
afoot lock busily ;d)out them on the dim rarth, that not I. ing be

They drive forth ; and a new day's march IX-LMII^ ; to
through the long heat; till evening. After three hours journey-
ing, in the desert plain, we passed before er-Russ; — whose
villagers, two generations ago, spared not to fell their palm
stems for a bulwark, and manfully resisted all the assaults of
Ibrahim Pasha's army. The Emir sent a thelul rider to the
place for tidings : who returned with word, that the samn
caravaners of er-Russ were gone down with the Boreyda kfifily,
which had passed-by them two days ago. Er-Russ (which they
say is greater than Khubbera) appears as three oases lying
north and south, not far asunder. In the first, er-Rudytha, is
the town ; in the second, cr-Rafya, a village and high watch-
tower showing above the palms ; the third and least is called
Sliinhny. Er-Russ is the last settlement southward and gate of
el-Kasim proper. — We are here at the border of the Nefud ;
and bye and bye the plain is harsh gravel under our feet : we
re-enter that granitic and basaltic middle region of Arabia,
which lasts from the mountains of Shammar to Mecca. The corn
grounds of er-Russ are in the Wady er-Rummah ; their palms
are above.

I saw the Abanat — now half a day distant westward, to be a
low jebel coast, such as Ajj'a, trending south. There are two
mountains one behind other ; and the bed of the Wady (there
of no great width) lies betwixt them. The northern is named
el-Eswad, and oftener el-JZsmar, the brown and swart coloured ;
and the southerly, which is higher, el-Ahmar, the red mountain :
this is perhaps granite ; and that basaltic.

We came at noon to Umm Tyeh, other outlying granges of
er-Russ, and inhabited ; where some of us, riding-in to water,
found a plot of growing tobacco ! The men of Aneyza returned
laughing, to tell of this adventure in the caravan menzil : for it
was high noon, and the kafily halted yonder. — From this mogytt
we rose early ; and journeyed forth through a plain wilderness
full of basaltic and grey-red granite bergs [such as we have
seen in the Harb and Shammar diras westward]. Finally when
the sun was descending, with ruddy yellow light behind the
Aban mountains, we halted to encamp.

Zamil's letter, commending me to Ibrahim, the young caravan
emir, was brought to me by a client of the Bessam to-day.
Ibrahim — he succeeded his father, who till lately had been emir
of the town caravans — a sister's son of Zamil, was a manly
young sheykh of twenty years, of a gallant countenance ; and

VOL. II. Q

242 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

like Zamil in his youth, though not of like parts : a smiling
dissembler, confident and self-minded ; and the Wahaby rust
was in his soul. Such are the most young franklins in the free
oases, always masking as it were in holiday apparel : but upon
any turn of fortune, you find them haply to be sordid and
iniquitous Arabs. Ibrahim receiving ZamiPs letter from my
hand, put it hastily into his bosom unopened ; for he would
read what his uncle wrote to him concerning the Nasrany, bye
and bye in a corner ! He showed me daily pleasant looks ; and
sometimes as we journeyed, seeing me drooping in the saddle,
he would ride to me, and put his new-kindled galliun in my
hand : and some days, he bade me come to sup with him, in the
evening menzil. The young tradesmen that returned to Mecca,
where they had shops, and a few of the master-caravaners
mounted on theluls, rode with Ibrahim, in advance of the
marching kafily : now and then they alighted to kindle a fire
of sticks, and make coffee. I rode, with less fatigue, among
our burden camels. — Ibrahim told me, laughing, that he first
heard of me in Kuweyt (where he then arrived with a caravan) :
— ' That there was come a Nasrany to Hayil, Mahu thelditJiy
armdti, three spears' length (they said) of stature ! for certain
days the stranger had not spoken ! after that he found a mine
for Ibn Rashid, and then another ! ' — We lodged this night
under the berg el-Kir, little short of the peak Jebel Kezdz, —
D6khany being an hour distant, at our right hand ; where are
shallow water pits, and some ground-work of old building.

We journeyed on the morrow with the same high country
about us, beset with bergs of basaltic traps and granite. [The
steppe rises continually from el-Kasim to et-Tayif.] We came
early to the brackish pits er-Rukka ; and drew and replenished
our girbies : this thick well-water was full of old wafted drop-
pings of the nomads' cattle ; but who will not drink in the
desert, the water of the desert, must perish. Here is a four-
square clay kella, with high walls and corner towers, built by
those of er-Russ, for shelter when they come hither to dig gun-
salt, — wherewith the soil is always infected about old water
stations. We drank and rested out an hour, but with little
refreshment : for the simum — the hot land wind — was blowing,
as the breath of an oven ; which is so light and emptied of
oxygen, that it cannot fill the chest or freshen the blood ; and
there comes upon man and cattle a faintness of heart. — I felt
some relief in breathing through a wetted sponge.

Remounting we left Jebel Ummry at the right hand, a moun-
tain landmark of basalt which is long in sight. — I wondered
seeing before us three men in the khala ! they were wood-cutters

A WHITE COUNTRY 249

from '/V/v/V/fc, a desert village few hours distant to the west-
ward ; and thereby the Aneyza caravans pass some years. Not
ninny miles north of Therrieh is another village, Mi.skeh : these
atv |)oor corn settlements, without palms, — Miskeh is the greater,
where are hardly fifty houses. West of Therrieh is a hamlet,
Thoreyih, in the mountain, Shdba. The people of these villages
are of mixed kindred from el-Kasim, and of the nomads, and of
negro blood : others say they are old colonies of Heteym. An
'Ateyby sheykh, Mnfhkir, who rode rafik in our caravan [his
tribesmen are the Aarab of this vast wilderness], said, "those
villagers are descended from Muthur." The nomads about
them are sometimes Meteyr, sometimes Harb (intruded from
the westward), sometimes ' Ateyban ; but formerly those migrated
Annezy were their neighbours that are now in the Syrian desert.
— Far to the eastward are other three desert villages, es-Shaara,
Doadamy and Goayleli, which lie in the Haj way from Shuggera :
the inhabitants are Beny Zeyd ; and, it is said, ' their jid was a
Solubby ! ' — Passing always through the same plain wilderness
encumbered with plutonic bergs and mountains, we alighted at
evening under the peak Ferjcyn ; where also I saw some old
ground-courses, of great stones.

On the morrow we journeyed through the same high steppe,
full of sharp rocks, bergs and jebal, of trap and granite. At
noon we felt no more the fiery heat of yesterday ; and I read
in the aneroid that we were come to an altitude of nearly five
thousand feet ! where the bright summer air was light and re-
freshing. Now on our left hand are the mountains Minnieh, at
our right a considerable mountain of granite, Tokhfa. Our
nwgyil was by the watering el-Ghrol, in an hollow ground amidst
trap mountains : that soil is green with growth of harsh desert
bushes ; and here are two-fathom golbdn of the ancients, well
steyned. The water, which is sweet and light, is the only good
and wholesome to drink in all this way, of fifteen journeys, be-
tween el-Kasim and the Mecca country. — A day eastward from
hence is a mountain, Gabbily; whose rocks are said to be hewn
in strange manner.

This high wilderness is the best wild pasture land that I have
seen in Arabia : the bushes are few, but it is a ' white country '
overgrown with the desert grass, nussy. — What may be the
cause that this Arabian desolation should smile more than other
desolations of like soil, not far off? I enquired of the Ateyba
men who rode in the kafily with Muthkir ; and they answered,
that this ivilderness is sprinkled in the season by yearly sJwwers. —
Is it not therefore because the land lies in the border of the

244 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

monsoon or tropical rains? which fall heavily in the early
autumn, and commonly last five or six weeks at et-Tayif. Every-
where we see some growth of acacias, signs doubtless of ground-
water not far under : and yet in so vast a land-breadth (of three
hundred miles) there is no settlement ! [This may be because
the water is seldom or never sweet.] Of late years the land,
lying so open to the inroads of Ibn Rashid, has been partly
abandoned by the Aarab ; and the forsaken water-pits are
choked, for lack of cleansing. — After the watering, we journeyed
till evening : and alighted in a place called es-Shelab, near the
basalt mountain and water Kabshhn. The land-height is all one
since yesterday.

The fifth morning we journeyed in the same high country, full
of bergs, mostly granitic ; and often of strange forms, as the
granite rock is spread sheet-wise and even dome-wise and scale-
wise : a basalt berg with a strange vein in it called ' the wolf's
path ' is a landmark by the way. Ere noon we crossed traces
of a great ghrazzu ; which was that late foray, they said, of Ibn
Rashid against 'Ateyba. — Ere noon there was an alarm ! and the
kafily halted : some thought they had seen Aarab. All looked
to their arms ; many fired-off their long guns to load afresh ; the
weary drivers on foot, braving with their spears, began to leap
and dance : the companies drew together ; and the caravan ad-
vanced in better order. Sleyman, who among the first had
plucked off his gun-case, rode now with lighted matchlock in his
lap, cursing and grinding the teeth with malevolence. The like
did the most of them ; for this is the caravan fanaticism, to cry
to heaven for the perdition of their natural enemies ! — the
human wolves of the desert. Ibrahim sent out scouts to descry
the hovering foes : who bye and bye returned with word that
they found them to be but desert trees ! Then we heard it
shouted, by the Emir's servant, ' To advance freely ! ' At our
noon menzil we were still at the height of 4550 feet. — We rode
in the afternoon through the like plain desert, full of stand-
ing hay, but most desolate : the basalt rocks now exceed the
granites. And already two or three desert plants appeared,
which were new to my eyes, — the modest blossoms of another
climate : we saw no signs of human occupation. When -the sun
was setting they alighted in a place called Umm Meshe'aib; the
altitude is 4500 feet. We passed to-day the highest ground of
the great middle desert. — In the beginning of the twilight a
meteor shone brightly about us for a moment, with a beautiful
blue light ; and then drooping in the sky broke into many
lesser stars.

I found Muthkir. in all the menzils under Ibrahim's awning :

TNI. K\>Y I '.KDUIN HUMOUR 245

for he alighted with the emir. Tin* IJrduin sheykh rode with
us to salV-guard thiM'.-irnvan in nil n, count »TS wit li hi-('Ateyba)
tribesmen : and he and his two or three followers were as eyes
to us iii th«' khsila. — Nevertheless the Kasim caravaners, con-
tinually passing the main deserts from their youth, are tl
selves expert in land-craft. There was one among us, Sulih
(the only Ar;il>inn that I have seen cumbered with a wen in the
throat), who had passed this way to and from Mecca, he thought,
almost an hundred times, — that were more than four years,
or fifty thousand miles of desert journeys : and he had ridden
and gone not less in the north between his Kasim town and
the Gulf and river provinces. Salih could tell the name of
every considerable rock which is seen by the long wayside.
They know their paths, but not the vast wilderness beyond the
landmarks.

How pleasant is the easy humour of all Beduins ! in com-
parison with the harsher temper of townsfolk : I was bye and
bye friends with Muthkir. When we spoke of the traces of Ibn
Rashid's foray, he said, " Thou hast been at Hayil, and art a
mudowwy : eigh ! Khalil, could'st thou not in some wise quit us
from Ibn Rashid — el-Hdchim! and we would billah reward thee :
it is he who afflicts 'Ateyba." He said further, " In the [north]
parts from whence we be come there are none our friends, but
only Aneyza" : and when I enquired, Were his Aarab good folk ?
he answered " Eigh ! — such are they, as the people of Aneyza."
Then he asked, * If he visited me in my beled, what things
would I give him ? — a mare and a maiden to wife ?' — "And what
wilt thou give me, Muthkir, when I alight at thy beyt ? " At
this word the Beduin was troubled, because his black booth c[
ragged hair-cloth was not very far off; so he answered, he
would give me a bint, and she should be a fair one, to wife. —
"But I have given thee a mare, Muthkir."— " Well, Khalil, I
will give thee a camel. We go to Mekky, and thou to Jidda ;
and then whither wilt thou go ? " — "To India, it may pleaso
Ullah." — Ibrahim said, ' He had a mind to visit India with me ;
would I wait for him at Jidda ? till his coming clown again in
the Haj — after four months ! '

We removed an hour before dawn ; and the light showed a
landscape more open before us, with many acacia trees. Of all
the wells hitherto there are none so deep as four fathoms : this
land, said Muthkir, is full of golbdn and waterpits of the Aarab.
When it rains, he told me, the seyls die shortly in the soil ; but
if in any year it rain a flood, the whole steppe seyls down (west-
ward) to the Wady er-Rummah. The country is full of cattle-

246 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

paths, — it may be partly made by the wild goats and gazelles.
Leaving on our right hand the cragged J. Ske'aba, wherein " are
many bedun," we passed by a tent-like granite landmark,
Wareysieh ; and came to lodge at noon between black basaltic
mountains, full of peaks and of seyl strands ; — on this side was
Thul'aan en-Nir, and on that She'ar.

At each midday halt, the town camels are loosed out to pasture.
The weary brutes roam in the desert, but hardly take anything
into their parched mouths : they crop only a few mouthfuls by
the way in the early morning, whilst the night coolness is yet
upon the ground. The great brutes, that go fainting under
their loads, sweat greatly, and for thirst continue nearly with-
out eating till seventeen days be ended ; when they are dis-
charged at Mecca. But these beasts from Nejd suffer anew in
the stagnant air of the Tehama ; where they have but few days
to rest : so they endure, almost without refreshment ; till they
arrive again very feeble at Aneyza. Our hardened drivers [all
Arabs will — somewhat faint-heartedly — bemoan the aching life
of this world !] told me with groans, that their travail in the
journey was very sore ; one of them rode in the morning and
two walked ; in the afternoon one walked and two rode. The
march of the Kasim caravaners is not like the slowpaced proces-
sion of the Syrian Haj ; for they drive strenuously in the summer
heat, from water to water. The great desert waterings are far
asunder ; and they must arrive ere the fourth day, or the beasts
would faint.

The caravaners, after three days, were all beside their short
Semitic patience ; they cry out upon their beasts with the pas-
sionate voices of men in despair. The drivers beat forward the
lingering cattle, and go on goading them with the heel of their
spears, execrating, lamenting and yelling with words of evil
augury, Yd mdl et-teyr — hut ! eigh ! thou carrion for crows, Yd
mdl eth-thubbah, eigh ! butcher's meat : if any. stay an instant,
to crop a stalk, they cry, Yd mdl ej-jll(at 0 thou hunger's own !
Yelaan Ullah abu lid 7 ras, or hd 7 Jcalb or hd '/ hulk, May the
Lord confound the father of thy head, of thy heart, of thy long
halse. — Drivers of camels must have their eyes continually upon
the loaded beasts: for a camel coming to any sandy place is
likely to fall on his knees to wallow there, and ease his itching
skin ; — and then all must go to wreck ! They discern not their
food by sight alone, but in smelling ; and a camel will halt at
any white stone or bleached jella, as if it were some blanched
bone, — which if they may find at anytime they take it up in
their mouth, and champ some while with a melancholy air ; and
that is " for the saltiness ", say the Arabs. The caravaners in

A WKLL IX TIIK DESERT 247

the march ,-nv • \icli day of more waspish humour and fewer
words; there is naught said now but with great by-gods :
the drivers, whose mouths are bitter with thir.-.t. will hardly
ver each other with other than crabbed and vaunting
speech ; as ' I am the son of my father ! I the brother of my
little sister ! ' ' Am I the slave of thy father (that I should
serve or obey thee) ? ' And an angry soul will cry out on his
neighbour, Ullali la yubdrak fik, la yujib 9lak cl-klieyr, * The
Lord bless thee not, and send thee no good.'

The heat in our mid-day halt was 102° F. under the awnings,
and rising early we made haste to come to the watering ; where
we arrived two hours before the sunsetting. This is 'Afif, an
ancient well of ten fathoms to the water, and steyned with dry
building of the wild basalt blocks. — Sleyman, and the other
master caravaners, had ridden out before the approaching kafily,
with their tackle ; each one contending to arrive before other at
the well's mouth, and occupy places for the watering. When
we rode-in they stood there already by their gear ; which is a
thick stake pight in the ground, and made fast with stones : the
head is a fork, and in that they mount their draw-reel, mahal,
— as the nomads use at any deep golban, where they could not
else draw water. The cord is drawn by two men running out
backward ; a third standing at the well-brink receives the full
bucket, as it comes up ; and runs to empty it into the camel
trough, — a leather or carpet-piece spread upon a hollow, which
they have scraped with stick or stone and their hands in the
hard gravel soil. When so many camels must be watered at a
single jelib, there is a great ado of men drawing with all their
might and chanting in cadence, like the Beduw. I went to
drink at the camel troughs, but they bade me beware ; ' I might
chance to slip in the mire, and fall over the well brink,' which
[as in all desert golban] is even with the soil. The well-drawers'
task is not without peril ; and they are weary. At their last
coming down, an unhappy man missed his footing, — and fell in !
He was hastily taken up — for Arabs in the sight of such mis-
chiefs are of a sudden and generous humanity ! and many are
wont from their youth to go down in all manner of wells : — His
back was broken : and when the caravan departed, the sick
man's friends laid him upon a camel ; but he died in the march.
— To the first at the well succeeded other drawers ; and they
were not all sped in three hours. This ancient well-mouth is
mounded round with earth once cast up in the digging : thus the
waterers, who run backward, draw easily; and the stinking
sludge returns not to infect the well.

By that well side, I saw the first token of human life in this

248 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

vast wilderness, — the fresh ashes of a hunter's fire ! whereby lay
the greatest pair of gazelle horns that I have seen at any time.
The men were Solubba ; and some in the kafily had seen their
asses' footprints to-day. It is a marvel even to the Arabs, how
these human solitaries can live by their shooting, in the khala.
The Solubby may bear besides his long matchlock only a little
water ; but their custom is to drink a fill of water or mereesy
two hours before dawn : and then setting out, they are not
athirst till noon. I now learned to do the like ; and that early
draught sustained me until we halted at midday, though in
the meanwhile my companions had drunk thrice. — They would
hardly reach me the bowl, when they poured out for themselves
to drink ; and then it was with grudges and cursing : if Sley-
man were out of hearing, they would even deny the Nasrany
altogether. Sleyman, who was not good, said, "We all suffer
by the way, I cannot amend it, and these are Arabs : Abdullah
would find no better, were he here with his beard (himself). See
you this boy, Khalil ? he is one from the streets of Aneyza : that
other (a Beduwy lad, of Annezy in the North) has slain, they
say, his own father ; and he (the cook) yonder ! is a poor fol-
lower from the town : wellah, if I chided them, they would for-
sake me at the next halt ! " — It were breath lost to seek to drink
water in another fellowship : one day I rode by a townsman who
alighted to drink ; and ere he put up the bowl I asked him to
pour out a little for me also. His wife had been a patient of
mine, and haply he thought I might remember his debt for medi-
cines ; for hastily tying again the neck of his girby, he affected
not to know me. When I called him by name ! — he could no
longer refuse ; but undoing the mouth of the skin, he poured
me out a little of the desert water, saying, " Such is the road
and the toil, that no man remembers other ; but the word is
imshy hdl-ak ! help thyself forward." — A niggard of his girby
is called Bm'a el-md, Water-seller, by his angry neighbours.
My thelul was of little stature, wooden and weak : in walking
she could not keep pace with the rest ; and I had much ado to
drive her. The beast, said Sleyman, was hide-bound ; he would
make scotches in her sides, when they were come down to
Mecca.

I found here the night air, at the coolest, 72° F. ; the deep
well-water being then 79° F. The land-height is 4600 feet :
there were flies and gnats about the water. — The cattle were
drenched again towards morning : then we were ready to set
forward, but no signal was given. The sun rose ; and a little
after we heard a welcome shout of the emir's servant, El-yom
nej-i-i-im ! We shall abide here to-day.

A IJKST DAY 249

aro two p.-itlis I'm- I In- kjtJili.-s .L" >in<j; <l')\vn from »•!-
im to Mecca; 1 ho west derb with more and bet t in^s,

— in which the butter caravan of Mon-yda and rr-Russ
jounii'ving before us — is called • x->SW///////, the * highway '. The,
middle derb, wherein we marched, is held by convoys that
would pass expeditely : it is far between waterings, and tli- -r •
is the less likelihood of strife with Aarab summering upon any
of them. — The caravaners durst not adventure to water their
camels, in presence of the (fickle) Beduw : in such hap they
may require the nomads to remove, who on their part will
listen to the bidding of townsfolk with very evil mind. But if
the Beduw be strong in number, the townspeople must make
a shift to draw in liaste with arms in their hands: and drive-
on their half-refreshed beasts to the next cattle-pits, which in
this wilderness are mostly bitter. — There is a third path, east of
us, derb Winii/ Xli'iin., with few and small maweyrids ; which is
trodden by flying companies of thelul riders. Last year the good
Abdullah el-Bessam, returning home by that way from Jidda,
found the well-pit choked, when he came to one of those disused
waterings, Jelib ibn Haddif ; and he with his fellowship laboured
a day to clear it. The several derbs lie mostwhat so nigh to-
gether, that we might view their landmarks upon both sides.

'Afif, where we rested, is an hollow ground like el-Ghrol,
encompassed by low basaltic mountains. I saw the rude basalt
stones of this well's mouth in the desert encrusted white, and
deeply scored by the nomads' soft ropes ! Hereabout grows
great plenty of that tall joint-grass (thurrm), which we have
seen upon the Syrian Haj road. The fasting camels were
driven out to pasture ; and the 'Ateyba Beduins, companions of
Miithkir, went up into the mergab — which was the next height
of basalt — to keep watch. Great was the day's heat upon the
kerchiefed heads of them who herded the camels ; for the sun
which may be borne in journeying, that is whilst we are passing
through the air, is intolerable even to Nomads who stand still :
our Beduin hind sighed to me, " Oh ! this sun ! " which boiled
his shallow brains. Towards evening a sign being made from
the mergab ! the caravan camels were hastily driven in. The
scouts had descried z6l, as they supposed, of some Aarab : but
not long after they could distinguish them to be four Solubbies,
riding on asses.

We set forward from 'Afif before the new day. When the
sun came up we had left the low mountain train of A fit. la on
our left hand ; and the wilderness in advance appeared more
open: it is overgrown with hay ; and yet, Miithkir tells me, they

250 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

have better pastures ! The mountains are now few : instead of
bergs and peaks, we see but rocks. — I was riding in the van ;
and a great white gazelle-buck stood up in his lair before us :
The thobby, which was thick grown as a great he-goat, after a
few steps stood still, to gaze on this unwonted procession of
men and camels ; then he ran slowly from us. The well-mounted
young gallants did off their gun-leathers ; and pricked after the
quarry on their crop-eared theluls, which run jetting the long
necks like birds : — to return when they were weary, from a
vain pursuit ! Desert hares started everywhere as we passed,
and ran to cover under the next bushes, — the pretty tips yet
betraying them of their most long ears.

For two days southward the desert land is called es-8hiffa,
which is counted three days wide ; others say ' Es-Shiff a lies
between er-Russ and 'Afif ; and all beyond is el-Hdzzam, for
two and a half journeys : ' Muthkir holds that the Hazzam
and the Shiffa are one. In all this vast land-breadth I had not
seen the furrow of a seyl ! — Our mountain marks are now M6r-
dumma, on the left ; and at our right hand three conical bergs
together, MethhlitJia. Jebel es-Sh'eyb, which appears beyond,
lies upon the derb es-Sultdny : there is good water [this is
Gadyta of the old itineraries, — v. Die alte G-eogr. Arabiens ;
wherein we find mentioned also Datliyna, that is the water-pits
Dafina ; and Koba, which is Goba, a good watering] : J. Meshaf
stands before us. Our mogyil was between the mountains
'Ajjilla and etJi-Thlal ; the site is called Shebr^m, a bottom
ground with acacia trees, and where grows great plenty of a
low prickly herb, with purple blossoms, of the same name. In
this neighbourhood are cattle-pits of the Aarab, Sh'brdmy.

Here at the midst of the ShefFa is an head, says Muthkir
(though it be little apparent), of Wady Jerrtr. This is the
main affluent from the east country of the Wady er-Rummah ;
that in some of their ancient poems is feigned to say ; ' My
side valleys give me to sip ; there is but Wady Jerrir which
•allays my thirst', — words that seem to witness of the (here)
tropical rains ! In the course of this valley, which is north-
westward, are many water-holes of the Beduw. Some interpret
JZummak ' old fretted rope ' [which might be said of its much
winding]. — We journeyed again towards evening : the landscape
is become an open plain about us ; and the last mountain north-
ward is vanished from our horizon. — Where we lodged at the
-.sunset I found the land height to be 4100 feet.

We removed not before dawn : at sunrise I observed the
same altitude, and again at mid-day ; when the air under the
awnings was 107° F. This open district is called ed-D'aika,

IN LOADING f'AMI 251

which they interpret • plain without bergs of mixed earth and
good pasture.' Eastward we saw a far-off jebel ; and the head
of a solitary mountain, A7/"Y, before us. Later we passed be-
tween the Seffua and 'Aridhn mountains and Thciint/iht which
is a landmark and watering-place upon the derb es-Snlt;'my. —
Near the sunsetting we rode over a wide ground crusted with
salt ; and the caravan alighted beyond.

Arriving where he would encamp, the emir draws bridle and,
smiting her neck, hisses to his dromedary to kneel ; and the
great infirm creature, with groans and bowing the knees, will
make some turns like a hound ere her couching down. — Strange
is the centaur-like gaunt figure of the Arab dromedary rider
regarded from the backward ; for under the mantled man ap-
pears— as they were his demesurate pair of straddling (camel)
legs. The master caravaners ride-in after the emir to take
their menzils, — having a care that the lodgings shall be dis-
posed in circuit : then the burden camels are driven up to their
places and unloaded. The unruly camel yields to kneel, being
caught by the beard : if a couched camel resist, rolling and
braying, lay hold on the cartilage of his nose, and he will be all
tame. We may think there is peril of his teeth, Arabs know
there is none ; for the great brute is of mild nature, though he
show no affection to mankind. Beduins gather sappy plants
and thrust them into their camels' jaws, — which I have done
also a thousand times ; and never heard that anyone was bitten.
[I have once — in Sinai — seen a muzzled camel.] Though they
snap at each other in the march it is but a feint : a grown
camel has not the upper front teeth.

Our morrow's course — the tenth from Aneyza — was toward
the flat-topped and black (basaltic) conical Jebel Khal ; and a
swelling three-headed (granitic) mountain Thtilm. — The Nejd
pilgrims cry out joyfully in their journey, when they see these
jebal, ' that, thanks be to God, they are now at the midway ! '
In the midst is the maweyrid Shurrma, where we alighted three
hours before mid-day: here are cattle pits, but of so bitter
water, that the Kusman could not drink. " We shall come,
they said, to another watering to-morrow." There was little
left in their girbies. I chose to drink here, enforcing myself
to swallow the noisome bever, rather than strive with Sleyman's
drivers : the taste was like alum. But the cooks filled up some
flagging skins of 'Afif water ; and thus mingled it might serve
they thought, to boil the suppers. The three shallow pits
[one is choked], with water at a fathom, are dry-steyned. • In
the midst of our watering, the wells were drawn dry ; and the

252 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

rest of the thirsting camels were driven up an hour later to
drink, when the water was risen in them again. The land-
height is the same as in our yesterday's march.

Journeying from Shurrma, we began to cross salty bottoms ;
and were approaching that great vulcanic country, the Harrat
el-Kisshub. We pass wide-lying miry grounds, encrusted with
subbakha ; and white as it were with hoarfrost : at other times
we rode over black plutonic gravel ; and I thought I saw clear
pebbles shining amongst the stones. In this desert landscape,
of one height and aspect, are. many sammar (acacia) trees : but
the most were sere, and I saw none grown to timber.- — A coast
loomed behind Khal : " Look ! Khalil, said my companions,
yonder is the Harrat el-Kisshub ! " a haze dimmed the Harra
mountains, which I soon perceived to be crater-hills, hillidn.
In this march I rode by certain round shallow pits, a foot deep,
but wide as the beginning of water-holes ; and lying in pairs
together. I hailed one of the kafily as he trotted by; who
responded, when I showed him the place, " Here they have
taken out gold ! " I asked Muthkir of it in the evening : " Ay
Khalil, he answered, we find many rasdm, ' traces,' in our dira,
— they are of the auellin"

On the morrow we removed very early to come this day to
water. When the light began to spring, I saw that our course
lay even with the Harra border, some miles distant. The lower
parts were shrouded in the morning haze, where above I saw
the tops of crater hills. The derb es-Sultany lies for a day and
a half over this lava field. We coast it ; which is better for
the camels' soles, that are worn to the quick in a long voyage.
[Muthkir tells me, the lavas of the Harrat Terr'a, which joins
to the Kisshub, are so sharp that only asses may pass them :
and therein are villages and palms of 'Ateyba Aarab.] A foot-
sore beast must be discharged ; and his load parted among them
will break the backs of the other camels. Some Nejd caravaners
are so much in dread of this accident, that in the halts they cure
their camels' worn feet with urine. — Might not the camels be
shod with leather ? there is a stave in the moallakat [LEBEID, 23]
which seems to show that such shoes were used by the (more
ingenious) ancient Arabians.

Betwixt us and the lava country is the hard blackish crusted
mire of yesterday ; a flat without herb or stone, without foot-
print, and white with subbakha : tongues of this salty land
stretch back eastward beyond our path. A little before noon we
first saw footprints of nornad cattle, from the Harra- ward; — where-
under is a good watering, in face of us. In the mid-day halt our
thirst was great : the people had nothing to drink, save of that

KIIALII. DKMKD \V\TER

sour rind Mark wn1t>r from Bhamnft ; and wt» rould into

the welli, till nightfall, or early on tin- morrow. I found tlw

Ill-ill of tlio air under the awnings 1<)7 I'1. ; and th»« -iimmi
blowing. | n j lui caravan fellowihipfl they eat dates in f In- mog-
yil, and what little burghrol or temmn may be left over from
t li.-ir suppers. Masters and drivers sit at meat together ; but to-
day none could eat for thirst. I went to the awnings of Ibrahim
and Bessam — each of them carried as many as ten girbies — to
siM-k a fenjeyn of coffee or of water. The young men granted
these sips of water and no more ; for such are Arabians on the
journey : I saw they had yet many full waterskins !

That nooning was short, because of the people's thirst, — and
the water yet distant. As we rode forth I turned and saw my
companions drinking covertly ! besides they had drunk their fills
in my absence, after protesting to me that there was not any ;
and I had thirsted all day. I thought, might I drink this once,
I could suffer till the morning. I called to the fellows to pour
me out a little ; ' we were rafiks, and this was the will of Abd-
ullah el-Kenneyny ' : but they denied me with horrible curs-
ing ; and Sleyman made merchant's ears. I alighted, for ' need
hath no peer ', and returned to take it whether they would or
no. The Beduwy, wagging his club and beginning to dance,
would maintain their unworthy purpose : but Sleyman (who
feared strife) bade them then pour out for Khalil. — It was sweet
water from 'Afif, which they had kept back and hidden this
second day from the Nasrany : they had yet to drink of it twice
in the afternoon march. — Sleyman was under the middle age, of
little stature, of a sickly nature, with some sparkles of cheerful
malice, and disposed to fanaticism. I had been banished from
Aneyza, and among these townsmen were many of the Wah&by
sort ; but the most saluted me in the long marches with a friendly
word, " How fares Khalil, art thou over weary ? well ! we shall
be soon at our journey's end." Once only I had heard an in-
jurious word ; that was in the evening rest at 'Afif, when
crossing in the dark towards Ibrahim and Muthkir I lighted on
some strange fellowship, and stumbled at the butter skins.
" Whither 0 kafir," cried their hostile voices ; but others called
to them ' to hold their mouths ! — and pass by, mind them not
Khalil.'

Sleyman told me he had sometime to do with the English
shippers, on the Gulf : " they were good people, and better than
the Turks. Trust thy goods, quoth he, to the Engleys ; for they
will save thee harmless, if anything should be damaged or lost.
But as for Turkish shipping, you must give to the labourers, and
again ere they will receive your goods aboard ; besides the officer

254 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

looks for his fee, and the seamen will embezzle somewhat on
the ship's voyage : but with the English you shall find right
dealing and good order. And yet by Ullah, if any Engleys take
service with the Osmully, they become bribe-catchers, and are
worse than the Turks ! " — The brazen sun, in the afternoon
march, was covered with clouds : and when we had ridden in
these heavenly shadows three hours, leaving the mountains el-
Kamim and Hahrfo* behind our backs, I saw some stir in the
head of our kafily ; and thelul-riders parted at a gallop ! They
hastened forward to seek some cattle-pits, lying not far beside
the way. When they came to the place, every man leapt down
in a water-hole, to fill his girby ; where they stood up to their
middles in the slimy water : each thirsty soul immediately
swallowed his bowlful ; and only then they stayed to consider
that the water was mawkish !

This is Hazzeym es-Seyd, a grove of acacia trees, — very beau-
tiful in the empty khala ! and here are many cattle-pits of a
fathom and a half, to the water ; which rises of the rain. — Now
we looked back, and saw the kafily heading hither ! the thirsty
drivers had forsaken their path. Ibrahim, when the camels were
driven in, gave the word to encamp. That water was welcome
more than wholesome ; — the most were troubled with diarrhoea
in the night. I felt no harm ; — nor yesterday, after drinking
the Shurrma water : which made me remember with thankful
mind, that in these years spent in countries, where in a manner
all suffer, I had never sickened.

In the night-time Ibrahim sent some thelul-riders to spy out
that water before us, where we had hoped to arrive yesterday ;
and bring word if any Aarab were lodged upon it. — The sun
rose and we yet rested in this pleasant site. And some went
out with their long matchlocks amongst the thorny green trees,
to shoot at doves [which haunt the maweyrids, but are seldom
seen flying in the khala] : but by the counsel of Mtithkir,
Ibrahim sent bye and bye to forbid any more firing of guns ;
for the sound might draw enemies upon us. — When the sun was
half an hour high, we saw our scouts returning ; who rode in
with tidings, that they had seen only few Beduw at the water,
which were 'Ateyban ; and had spoken with one they found in
the desert, who invited them to come and drink milk. We
remained still in our places ; and the awnings were set up. — A
naga fatir was slaughtered ; and distributed among the fellow-
ships, that had purchased the portions of meat. Three or four
such slaughter-beasts were driven down in the kafily : and
in this sort the weary caravaners taste flesh meat, every few
days.

NICJHT CALLING AVI) rrRSFNG 255

Tlu> cam van n -moved at noon : the sj.lt Huts reaching back to
the vulcanic coast, lay always before us; and to the left the
desert horizon. We passed on between the low J. Hakr&n and
the skirts of tho Harra. At sunset the caravan entered a
v<l hay in an outflow of tlio Ilarra: that lava rock is
li.-.-ivy and basaltic. Here is a watering place of many wells,—
1 1-Moyt or cl-Moy She'ab, or Ameah Hakr&n, a principal maurid
of tlie Aarab.

The Bednins were departed : yet we alighted in the twilight
somewhat short of the place ; for * the country in these months
is full of thieves '. But every fellowship sent one to the wells
with a girby, to fetch them to drink. The caravaners now
encamped in a smaller circuit, for the fear of the desert : the
coffee and cooking fires were kindled ; it was presently dark
night, and watches were set. In each company one wakes for
the rest ; and they make three watches till dawn. If any pass
by the dim fire-lights, or one is seen approaching, a dozen cruel
throats cry out together, Min hdtha, ' Who is there, who ? '
And all the fellowships within hearing shout hideously again,
JBtkbah-hu ! kill-kill him ! So the beginning of the night is
full of their calling and cursing ; since some will cross hither
and thither, to visit their friends. When I went through the
camp to seek Ibrahim and Muthkir, and the son of Bessam ;
huge were the outcries, Etfibah-hu ! — Min hu hdtha ? the answer
is Ana sahib, It is I, a friend ; or Tdyib, md ft shey, It is well,
there is nothing. — Sleyman tells me, that in their yearly pil-
grimage caravan, in which is carried much merchandise and
silver, they keep these night watches in all the long way of the
desert.

At break of day the Kusinan, with arms in their hands !
drove the camels to water : and their labour was soon sped, for
the wells were many. The kafily departed two hours after the
sunrise, the thirteenth from Aneyza. We had not met with
mankind since el-Kasim ! but now a few Beduins appeared
driving their cattle to water. The same steppe is about us :
many heads of quartz, like glistering white heaps, are seen in
this soil. We passed by a dar, or old worn camping-ground of
the Aarab ; and cattle-pits of bitter water. The high coast of
the Harrat el-Kisshub trends continually with our march ; I
could see in it green acacias, and drift-sand banked up high
from the desert : the crater-hills appeared dimly through the
sunny haze. [These great lavas have overflowed plutonic rocks :
— those of Kheybar and the 'Aueyrid a soil of sandstones.]
The salt-flats yet lie between our caravan path and the Harra. —
Such is the squalid landscape which we see in going down from

256 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

Nejd to Mecca ! The height of all this wilderness is 4200 feet
nearly.

We halted at high noon,. sun-beaten and in haste to rear-up
the awnings. A Beduwy came riding to us from the wilderness
upon his thelul. The man, who was a friendly 'Ateyby, brought
word that the kafily of Boreyda was at the water Marrhn, under
the Harra yonder. — The simum rose, in our afternoon march, and
blustered from the westward. At the sun's going down we
alighted for the night: but some in the caravan, hearing that
cattle-pits were not far off, rode out to fill their girbies : they
returned empty, for the water was bitter and tasted, they told
us, of sulphur.

On the morrow, we saw everywhere traces of the Nomads.
The height of the desert soil is that which I have found daily
for a hundred miles behind us. Our path lies through a belt of
country, er-Rukkdba, which the Arabs say ' is the highest in all
the way, where there always meets them a cold air,' — when they
come up from the (tropical) Tehama. Notwithstanding their
opinion I found the altitude at noon and before sunset no more
than 4300 feet. The heat was lighter, and we look here upon a
new and greener aspect of the desert : this high plain reaches
south-eastward to et-Tayif. Each day, when the sun as we
journeyed was most hot over our heads, I nodded in the saddle
and swooned for an hour or two : but looking up this noonday
methought I saw by the sun that we were returning backward !
I thought, in those moments, it was a sun-stroke ; or that the
fatigues of Arabian travel had at length troubled my understand-
ing : bus the bitter sweat on my forehead was presently turned
to a dew of comfort, in the cogitation, that we were past the
summer tropic ; and the northing of the sun must reverse our
bearings. I saw in the offing a great mountain bank, eastward,
J. ffatthon, of the B'goom Aarab ; and beyond is the village
Ttirraba: under the mountain are, they say, some ancient
ruins. West of our path stands the black basaltic jebel, Ntfur
et-Tarik. The Harra has vanished from our sight: before us
lies the water Mehaditha. — This night was fresher than other :
the altitude being nearly 4600 feet. At dawn I found 73° F. and
chill water in the girbies.

The morrow's journey lay yet over the Rukkaba, always an
open plain : the height increases in the next hours to nearly five
thousand feet. I saw the acacia bushes cropped close, and trodden
round in the sand — by the beautiful feet of gazelles ! At our
mogyil the heat under the awnings was 102° F. — In the evening
march we saw sheep flocks of the Aarab ; and naked children

COME TO liKIHT

ktM>[)iiiLT them. The little Bcduins - - nut -In-own skinned Q1
the scourge of the southern sun — were of slender growth. We
espied their rami'ls ln-f«>r»' us : the herdsmen approached to en -
(|iiiiv tidings; and a horseman, who sat upon liis mare's bare
chin.-, thrust boldly in among us. We saw now their black-
booths: these Aaral) were Mn'uuhtn, of 'Ateyba. The sun was
low ; and turning a little aside from the nomad menzil we alighted
to encamp. — And there presently came over to us some of the
nomad women, who asked to buy clothing of the caravaners : but
the Kusmfm said it was but to spy out our encampment, and
where they might pilfer something in the night. Their keen
eyes noted my whiter skin ; and they asked quickly " Who he ?
— who is that stranger with you ? "

On the morrow we journeyed in the midst of the nomad flocks
— here all white fleeces. In this (now tropical) desert, I saw
some solitary tall plants of a jointed and ribbed flowering cactus,
</-//// n///^////, which is a cattle-medicine: the Aarab smear it in
the nostrils of their sick camels. The soil is sand and gravel of
the crystalline rocks. — Two hours before noon, we rode by the
head of another basaltic lava stream ; and met camels of the
same Sheyabin breasting up from the maweyrid Sh'aara, lying
nigh before us. These 'Ateyba camels are brown coloured, with
a few blackish ones among them ; and all of little stature : the
herdsmen were free and well-spoken weleds. — Riding by a
worsted booth standing alone, I saw only a Beduin wife and her
child that sat within, and said Salaam ! she answered again with
a cheerful " Welcome — welcome." — In approaching nomads, our
caravaners — ever in distrust of the desert folk — unsling their
long guns, draw off the leathers, blow the matches ; and ride
with the weapons ready on their knees.

Before us is a solitary black jebel, Biss, which is perhaps of
basalt. — And now we see again the main Harra ; that we are
approaching, to water at Sh'aara. Muthkir tells me, * the great
Harrat el-Kisshub is of a round figure [some say, It is one to two
days to go over] ; and that the Kisshub is not solitary, but a
member of the train of Harras between Mecca and Medina : the
Kisshub and the Ahrar el-Medina are not widely separated/
There met us a slender Beduin lad coming up after the cattle ;
and beautiful was the face of that young waterer, in his Mecca
tunic of blue ! — but to Northern eyes it is the woman's colour :
the black locks hanged down dishevelled upon his man-maidenly
shoulders. " Hoy, weled ! (cries our rude Annezy driver, who as
a Beduwy hated all Beduw not his own tribesfolk). — I say fel-
lows, is this one a male or a female ? " The poor weled's heart
swelled with a vehement disdain ; his ingenuous eyes looked

VOL. II, R

258 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

fiercely upon us, and he almost burst out to w,eep. — Sh'aara,
where we now arrived, is a bay in the Harra that is here called
A'ashiry. The end of the lava, thirty feet in height, I found to
overlie granite rock, — which is whitish, slacked, and crumbling,
with the suffered heat : the head of lava has stayed at the edge
of the granite reef. Sh'aara is a sh'aeb or seyl-strand which
they reckon to the Wady 'Adziz and Wady el-'Agig. Here are
many narrow-mouthed wells of the ancients, and dry-steyned
with lava stones ; but some are choked. We heard from the
Aarab that the Boreyda caravan watered here last noon : since
yesterday the desert paths are one. I found the altitude, 4900
feet.

The caravaners passed this night under arms. Our slumbers
were full of shouted alarms, and the firing of matchlocks ; so that
we lay in jeopardy of our own shot, till the morning. If any
Beduin thief were taken they would hale him to the Emir's tent ;
and his punishment, they told me, would be "to beat him to
death ". Almost daily there is somewhat missed in the kafily ;
and very likely when we mounted ere day, it was left behind upon
the dim earth. — In the next menzil the owner, standing up in his
place, will shout, through his hollow hands, ' that he has lost
such a thing ; which if anyone have found, let him now restore
it, and remember Ullah '.

Some of the Beduins came to us in the morning ; who as soon
as they eyed me, enquired very earnestly, what man I were. Our
caravaners asked them of the price of samn in Mecca. When
we removed, after watering again the camels, a Beduin pressed
hardily through the kafily : he was ill clad as the best of them,
but of comely carriage beside the harsh conditions of drudging
townsfolk. Our bold-tongued Annezy driver cursed the father
that begat him, and bade him stand off! but the 'Ateyby drew
out his cutlass to the half and, with a smile of the Beduin ur-
banity, went on among them : he was not afraid of townlings in
his own dira. We journeyed again : and the coast of the Harra
appeared riding high upon the plain at our right hand. We
found a child herding lambs, who had no clothes, but a girdle
of leathern thongs. [Afterward I saw hareem wearing the like
over their smocks : it may be a South Arabian guise of the
haggu.~\ The child wept, that he and his lambs were overtaken
by so great a company of strangers : but stoutly gathering his
little 'flock, he drove aside and turned his blubbered cheeks
from us.

Here we passed from the large and pleasant plains of Nejd ;
and entered a cragged mountain region of traps and basalts, er-
RVa, where the altitude is nearly 5000 feet. [Hi* a we have seen

TllK Rl'A PASSAGE

••rij) and wild pa^aio' in t In- jfJM-1, — 1 find no like

••rij) an w pa^aio' n n- fM-, — n no e
word in our lowland language.] In the l«i'a • tain

^tiarlrd l.ii -lies, nMitift, which I had seen last in thu limestone

hills of Syria : and we passed by the blackened sites of (Meccan)
charcoal burners. Knrtlu-r in this strait we rode by cairns:
some of them, which show a rude building, might be sepulchres
of principal persons in old time, — the Ki'a is a passage betwixt
pvat regions. If I asked any in the caravan, What be these
heaps ? they answered, " Works of the kafirs, that were in the
land before the Moslemin : — how Khalil ! were they not of thy
people ? " Others said, " They are of the Beny Helal."

From this passage we ascended to the left, by a steep seyl,
encumbered with rocks and acacia trees. Not much above, is
a narrow brow ; where I saw a cairn, and courses of old dry
building ; and read under my cloak the altitude 5500 feet, which
is the greatest in all the road. There sat Ibrahim with his com-
panions ; and the emir's servant stood telling the camels — passing
one by one, which he noted in a paper ; for upon every camel
(as said) is levied a real. Few steps further the way descended
again, by another torrent. — I looked in vain for ancient scored
inscriptions : here are but hard traps and grey-red granite, with
basalt veins.

The aspect of this country is direful. We were descending to
Mecca — now not far off — and I knew not by what adventure I
should live or might die on the morrow : there was not anyone
of much regard in all the caravan company. Sleyman's good-
will was mostwhat of the thought, that he must answer for the
Nasrany, to his kinsman Abdullah. Abd-er-Rahman was my
friend in the kafily, — in that he obeyed his good father : he was
amiable in himself ; and his was not a vulgar mind, but mesquin.
I felt by his answers to-day, that he was full of care in my
behalf.

It was noon when we came forth upon a high soil, straitened
betwixt mountains, like a broad upland wady. This ground,
from which the Nejd caravans go down in a march or two short
stages, to Mecca, is called es-Seyl: I found the height to be
5060 feet. — The great Wady el-Humth whereunto seyls the
Harb country on both sides, and the Harras between Mecca and
Tebuk, is said to spring from the Wady Laymun, which lies a
little below, on the right hand : the altitude considered, this is
not impossible.

We have passed from Nejd ; and here is another nature of
Arabia ! We rode a mile in the narrow Seyl plain, by thickets

260 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

of rushy grass, of man's height ! with much growth of pepper-
mint ; and on little leas, — for this herbage is browsed by the
caravan camels which pass-by daily between Mecca and Tayif.
Now the kafily halted, and we alighted : digging here with their
hands they find at a span deep the pure rain water. From hence
I heard to be but a march to Tayif: and some prudent and
honest persons in the kafily persuaded me to go thither, saying,
' It was likely we should find some Mecca cameleers ascending
to et-Tayif, and they would commit me to them, — so I might
arrive at et-Tayif this night; and they heard the Sherif (of
Mecca) was now at et-Tayif : and when I should be come thither,
if I asked it of the Sherif, he would send me down safely to
Jidda.'

— What pleasure to visit Tayif ! the Eden of Mecca, with
sweet and cool air, and running water ; where are gardens of
roses, and vineyards and orchards. But these excellencies are
magnified in the common speech, for I heard some of the Kus-
man saying, ' They tell wonders of et-Tayif ! — well, we have
been there ; and one will find it to be less than the report.' —
The maladies of Arabia had increased in me by the way ; the
lower limbs were already full of the ulcers, that are called hub or
Hzr or lethra et-tdmr, ' the date button/ on the Persian Gulf
coast [because they rise commonly near the time of date har-
vest]. The boil, which is like the Aleppo button, is known in
many parts of the Arabic world, — in Barbary, in Egypt (' Nile
sores ') ; and in India (' Delhi boil ') : it is everywhere ascribed
to the drinking of unwholesome water. The flat sores may be
washed with carbolic acid, and anointed with fish oil ; but the
evil will run its course, there is no remedy : the time with me
was nearly five months. — Sores springing of themselves are
common among the Beduw. [Comp. also Deut. xxviii. 35.] For
such it seemed better to descend immediately to Jidda ; also I
rolled in my heart, that which I had read of (old) Mecca Sherifs :
besides, were it well for me to go to et-Tayif, why had not el-
Bessam — who had praised to me the goodness of the late Sherif
— given me such counsel at Aneyza ? Now there sat a new
Sherif : he is also Emir of Mecca ; and I could not know that
he would be just to a Nasrany.

The Kusman were busy here to bathe themselves, and put off
their secular clothing : and it was time, for the tunics of the
drivers and masters were already of a rusty leaden hue, by their
daily lifting the loads ol butterskins. — Sitting at the water-holes,
each one helped other, pouring full bowls over his neighbour's
head. And then, every man taking from his bundle two or
three yards of new calico or towel stuff, they girded themselves.

KTK'N KL-MENAZTL 201

This is tin* ilirfim, or pilgrim-' Loin-cloth, \\liic1i covers
tin* kn.'r; ;md n lap • M-| OT6T th-» hoiildor. Tlu-y are

henceforth l>;uv-h.-;idi'd ;nnl hall'-;, -md in ii,

every soul enter tin- sacred precincts : l.ul it' one I).- oi' the town
or garrison, it is liis duly only after a certain absence. In the
men of our Nejd caravan, a company of butter-chandlers, that
descend yearly with this merchandise, could be no fresh trans-
ports of heart, They see but fatigues before them in the Holy
City; and I heard some say, * that the heat now in Mekky
[with clouded simuin weather] would be intolerable ' : they
are all day in the suks, to sell their wares; and in the sultry
nights they taste no refreshing, until they be come again
hither. The fellowships would lodge in hired chambers : those
few persons in the caravan who were tradesmen in the City
would go home ; and so would the son of Bessum : his good
father had a house in town ; and an old slave-woman was left
there, to keep it.

This is a worn camping-ground of many generations of pil-
grims and caravaners ; and in summer the noon station of pas-
sengers between the Holy City and et-Tayif. Foul rakhams
were hawking up and down ; and I thought I saw mortar clods
in this desert place, and some old substruction of brick building !
— My Aneyza friends tell me, that this is the old station Kurn
el-mendzil ; which they interpret of the interlacing stays of the
ancient booths, standing many together in little space. I went
barefoot upon the pleasant sward in the mid-day sun, — which at
this height is temperate ; for what sweetness it is, after years
passed in droughty countries, to tread again upon the green sod !
Only the Nasrany remained clad among them ; yet none of the
Kusman barked upon me : they were themselves about to
arrive at Mecca ; and I might seem to them a friend, in com-
parison with the malignant Beduin people of this country [el-
Hatktyl].

I found Bessain's son, girded only in the ihram, sitting under
his awning. " Khalil, quoth he, yonder — by good fortune ! are
some cameleers from et-Ta,yif : I have spoken with one of them ;
and the man — who is known — is willing to convey thee to
Jidda."—'' And who do I see with them ? "— " They are Jdwwa.
[Java pilgrims so much despised by the Arabians : for the Malay
faces seem to them hardly human ! I have heard Amm Moham-
med say at Kheybar, ' Though I were to spend my lifetime in
the Btled ej-Jdunva, I could not — ! wellah I could not wive
with any of their hareem.' Those religions strangers had been
at Tayif, to visit the Sherif ; and the time was at hand of their

262 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

going-up, in the ' little pilgrimage ', to Medina.] Khalil, the
adventure is from Ullah : wellah I am in doubt if we may find
anyone at cl-lAyn, to accompany thee to the coast. And I must
leave the kafily ere the next halt ; for we (the young com-
panions with Ibrahim) will ride this night to Mecca ; and not to-
morrow in the sun, because we are bare-headed. Shall we send
for Sleyman, and call the cameleer ? — but, Khalil, agree with
him quickly ; for we are about to depart, and will leave thee
here."

— That cameleer was a young man of wretched aspect ! one
of the multitude of pack-beast carriers of the Arabic countries,
whose sordid lives are consumed with daily misery of slender
fare, and broken nights on the road. In his wooden head seemed
to harbour no better than the wit of a camel, so barrenly he
spoke. Abd-er-Hahm&n : " And from the 'Ayn carry this pas-
senger to Jidda, by the Wady Fatima." — " I will carry him
by Mecca, it is the nigher way." Abd-er-Ralimhn, and Sleymhn :
" Nay, nay ! but by the Wady, — Abd-er-Rahman added ; This
one goes not to Mecca," — words which he spoke with a fana-
tical strangeness, that betrayed my life ; and thereto Sleyman
rolled his head ! So that the dull cameleer began to imagine
there must be somewhat amiss ! — he gaped on him who should
be his charge, and wondered to see me so white a man ! I cut
short the words of such tepid friends : I would ride from the
'Ayn in one course to Jidda, whereas the drudge asked many
days. The camels of this country are feeble, and of not much
greater stature than horses. Such camels move the Nejd men's
derision : they say, the Mecca cameleers' march is mithil, en-
nimml, ' at the ant's pace '.

That jemmal departed malcontent, and often regarding me,
whom he saw to be unlike any of the kinds of pilgrims. [As
he went he asked in our kafily, what man I were ; and some
answered him, of their natural malice and treachery, A Nas-
rdny ! When he heard that, the fellow said, ' Wullah-Bullali,
he would not have conveyed me, — no, not for an hundred reals !]
" Khalil, there was a good occasion, but thou hast let it pass ! "
quoth Abd-er-Rahman. — " And is it to such a pitiful fellow you
would commend my life, one that could not shield me from an
insult, — is this the man of your confidence ? one whom I find to
be unknown to all here : I might as well ride alone to Jidda."
Sleym&n : " Khalil, wheresoever you ride in these parts, they
will know by your saddle-frame that you are come from the
east [Middle Nejd]." — And likewise the camel-furnitures of
these lowland Mecca caravaners seemed to us to be of a strange
ill fashion.

TIIK I If HAM

Whilst, \\v were speaking Ibrahim's servant I 1o re-

move! The now half-nuked and knv-head'-d caravane
hastily: riders mounted ; and the NVjd knfily set forward. — We
were descending to Mecca ! and some of the rude drivers ///////A//////
[the devout cry of the pilgrims at Araffit] ; that is, looking to
heaven they say aloud /,//Mr///,7 /,///>/"/// •/ which might signify, 'to
do Thy will, to do Thy will (0 Lord) ! ' This was not a cheerful
song in my ears : my life was also in doubt for those worse than
unwary words of the son of Bessam. Such tidings spread apace
and kindle the cruel flame of fanaticism ; yet I hoped, as we had
set out before them, that we should arrive at the 'Ayn ere that
unlucky Mecca jemmal. I asked our Annezy driver, why he
craked so ? And he — " Auh ! how fares Khalil ? to-morrow we
shall be in Mekky ! and thus we cry, because our voyage is almost
ended, — Lubbeyk-lubbeyk ! "

The ihram or pilgrims' loin-cloth remains doubtless from
the antique religions of the Kaaba. I have found a tradition
among Beduins, that a loin-cloth of stuff which they call
ytmeny was their ancient clothing. — Women entering the sacred
borders are likewise to be girded with the ihram ; but in the
religion of Islam they cover themselves with a sheet-like veil.
Even the soldiery riding in the (Syrian or Egyptian) Haj
caravans, and the officers and the Pasha himself take the ihram :
they enter the town like bathing men, — there is none excused.
[The pilgrims must remain thus half-naked in Mecca certain
days; and may not cover themselves by night! until their
turning again from Arafat.] At Mecca there is, nearly all
months, a tropical heat : and perhaps the pilgrims suffer less
from chills, even when the pilgrimage is made in winter, than
from the sun poring upon their weak pates, wont to be covered
with heavy coifs and turbans. But if the health of anyone
may not bear it, the Lord is pitiful, it is remitted to him ; and
let him sacrifice a sheep at Mecca.

I saw another in our kafily who had not taken the ihram, —
a sickly young trader, lately returned from Bosra, to visit his
Kasim home ; and now he went down, with a little merchandise,
to Mecca. The young man had learned, in fifteen years' sojourn-
ing in the north, to despise Nejd, " Are they not (he laughed to
me) a fanatic and foolish people ? ha-ha ! they wear no shoes,
and are like the Beduins. I am a stranger, Khalil, as thou art,
and have not put on the ihram, I might take cold ; and it is but
to kill a sheep at Mekky." I perceived in his illiberal nicety
and lying, and his clay visage, that he was not of the ingenuous
blood. He had brought down a strange piece of merchandise in
our kafily, a white ass of Mesopotamia ; and looked to have a

264 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

double price for her in Mecca, — where, as in other cities of the
Arabic East, the ass is a riding-beast for grave and considerable
persons. [Confer Judg. v. 10.] I said to Abd-er-Rahman, who
was weakly, " And why hast thou taken the ihram ? " He
answered, ' that if he felt the worse by the way, he would put
on his clothing again ; and sacrifice a sheep in Mecca.' — These
are not pilgrims who visit the sacred city : they perform only
the ordinary devotion at the Kaaba ; and then they will clothe
themselves, to go about their affairs.

From the Seyl we descend continually in a stony valley-bed
betwixt black plutonic mountains, and half a mile wide : it is a
vast seyl -bottom of grit and rolling-stones, with a few acacia
trees. This landscape brought the Scandinavian fjelde to my
remembrance. The carcase of the planet is alike, everywhere :
it is but the outward clothing that is diverse, — the gift of the
sun and rain. They know none other name for this iron valley
than Wady es-Seyl. In all yonder horrid mountains are Aarab
Hatlieyl [gentile pi. el-Hetheyldn\, — an ancient name ; and it is
said of them in the country, " they are a lineage by themselves,
and not of kindred with the neighbour tribes." When Mecca
and Tayif cameleers meet with strangers coming down from Nejd,
they will commonly warn them with such passing words, " Ware
the Hatlieyl! they are robbers" The valley way was trodden
down by camels' feet ! The Boreyda caravan had passed before
us with two hundred camels, — but here I saw the footprints of
a thousand ! I knew not that this is the Mecca highway to
Tayif, where there go-by many trains of camels daily. When
the sun was setting we alighted — our last menzil — among the
great stones of the torrent- valley. The height was now only
3700 feet.

— It had been provided by the good Bessam, in case none
other could be found at the station before Mecca, that his own
man (who served his son Abd-er-Rahman by the way) should
ride down with me to Jidda. Abd-er-Rahman now called this
servant ; but the fellow, who had said " Ay-ay " daily in our long
voyage, now answered with lilla, ' nay-nay — thus the Arabs do
commonly fail you at the time ! — He would ride, quoth he, with
the rest to Mecca.' Abd-er-Rahman was much displeased and
troubled ; his man's answer confounded us. " Why then didst
thou promise to ride with Khalil ? go now, I entreat thee, said
he ; and KhaliPs payment is ready : thou canst not say nay."
Likewise Ibrahim the Emir persuaded the man ; — but he had no
authority to compel him. The fellow answered shortly, " I am
free, and I go not to Jidda ! " and so he left us. Then Ibrahim

r.KOKK.V PROMI83 265

for another in tin- l;;ilily, a poor man of good understand-

ing: and wh<'ii IK- camr In* ndc liim ride with Klialil to Jidda;
but he beginning to excuse liim <»•!(', they said, " Nothing hastens
thee, for a day or two, to be at Mecca ; only set a price — and no
nay ! " He asked five reals ; and with this slender assurance
they dismissed him : " Let me, I said, bind the man, by paying
him earnest-money." Ibrahim answered, " There is no need to-
night ; — in the morning ! " I knew then in my heart that this
was a brittle covenant ; and had learned to put no trust in the
evening promises of Arabs. — " Ya Muthkir ! let one of your
Beduins ride with me to Jidda."— "Well, Khalil, if that might
help thee ; but they know not the way." Ibrahim, Abd-er-
Rahman and the young companions were to mount presently,
after supper, and ride to Mecca, — and then they would abandon
me in this sinister passage. I understood later, that they had
deferred riding till the morning light : — which came all too
soon ! And then we set forward.

It needed not that I should await that Promiser of over-night ;
who had no thoughts of fulfilling Ibrahim and Abd-er-Rahman's
words, — and they knew this. Though to-day was the seven-
teenth of our long marches from Aneyza ; yet, in the sameness
of the landscape, it seemed to me, until yesterday, when we
passed es-Sh'aara, as if we had stood still. — The caravan would
be at Mecca by mid-day : I must leave them now in an hour,
and nothing was provided.

We passed by a few Beduins who were moving upward : light-
bodied, black-skinned and hungry-looking wretches : their poor
stuff was loaded upon the little camels of this country. I saw
the desolate valley-sides hoary with standing hay — these moun-
tains lie under the autumn (monsoon) rains — and among the
steep rocks were mountain sheep of the nomads ; all white
fleeces, and of other kind than the great sheep in Nejd. Now
in the midst of the wady we passed through a grove of a tree-
like strange canker-weed (el-'esJia), full of green puff -leaves ! the
leafy bubbles, big as grape-shot, hang in noisome-looking clusters,
and enclose a roll of seed. This herb is of no service, they say,
to man or cattle ; but the country people gather the sap, and
sell it, for a medicine, to the Persian pilgrims ; and the Beduins
make charcoal of the light stems for their gunpowder. There
met us a train of passengers, ascending to Tayif, who had set
out this night from Mecca. The hareem were seated in litters,
like bedsteads with an awning, charged as a houdah upon camel-
back : they seemed much better to ride-in than the side cradles
of Syria.

266 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

I was now to pass a circuit in whose pretended divine law is
no refuge for the alien ; whose people shut up the ways of the
common earth ; and where any felon of theirs in comparison
with a Nasrany is one of the people of Ullah. I had looked to
my pistol in the night ; and taken store of loose shot about me ;
since I had no thought of assenting to a fond religion, If my
hard adventure were to break through barbarous opposition ;
there lay thirty leagues before me, to pass upon this wooden
thelul, to the coast ; by unknown paths, in valleys inhabited by
ashr&f [sherifs], the seed of Mohammed. — I would follow down
the seyl-strands, which must needs lead out upon the seabord.
But I had no food nor water ; and there was no strength left in
me, — Ibrahim who trotted by, gazed wistfully under my kerchief ;
and wondered (like a heartless Arab) to see me ride with tran-
quillity. He enquired, "How I did ? and quoth he, seest thou
yonder bent of the Wady ? when we arrive there, we shall be in
sight of lAyn ez-Zeyma" — " And wilt thou then provide for me,
as may befall ? " — "Ay, Khalil ; " and he rode further : I saw not
Abd-er-Rahrnan ! he was in the van with the companions.

The thelul of one who was riding a little before me fell on a
stone, and put a limb out of joint, — an accident which is with-
out remedy ! Then the next riders made lots hastily for the
meat ; and dismounting, they ran-in to cut the fallen beast's
throat : and began with their knives to hack the not fully dead
carcase. In this haste and straitness, they carved the flesh in the
skin ; and every weary man hied with what gore-dropping gobbet
his hand had gotten, to hang it at his saddle bow ; and that
should be their supper-meat at Mecca ! they re-mounted imme-
diately, and hastened forward. Between the fall of the thelul,
and an end of their butchery, the caravan camels had not
marched above two hundred paces ! — Now I saw the clay banks
of 'Ayn ez-Zeyma ! green with thura ; — and where, I thought,
in few minutes, my body might be likewise made a bloody
spectacle. We rode over a banked channel in which a spring
is led from one to the other valley-side. Besides the fields of
corn, here are but few orchards ; and a dozen stems of sickly
palms ; the rest were dead for fault of watering : the people of
the hamlet are Hatheyl. I read the altitude, under my cloak,
2780 feet.

Here is not the Hejaz, but the Tehama ; and according to all
Arabians, Mecca is a city of the Tehdma. Mecca is closed-in by
mountains, which pertain to this which we should call a middle
region ; nevertheless the heads of those lowland jebal (whose
border may be seen from the sea) reach not to the brow of
Nejd.

\ SAVAGE vnn i-:

hi tilt' (southern) valley- id.' Stand clay kella, now

ruinous; which was ft fort of the <»!<! \Vah:il»i»-~, to keep |
i^ate, of Nejd : and here I saw ;i first, eofVee-station AW//'-// (\
(inlni-n) of the Mecca country. This liospice is but a shelter of
rude clay walling and posts, with a loose thatch of palm branches
cast up. — Therein sat Ibrahim and the theliil riders of our
kafily; when I arrived tardily, with the loaded camels. Sley-
inan el-Kenneyny coming forth led up my riding-beast by the
bridle to this open inn. The Kusman called Klmlil ! and I
alighted ; but Abd-er-Rahman met me with a careful face. —
I heard a savage voice within say, " He shall be a Moslem " :
and saw it was some man of the country, — who drew out his
bright Mniitjttr ! " Nay ! answered the Kusman, nay ! not so."
I went in, and sat down by Ibrahim : and Abd-er-Rahman
whispered to me, " It is a godsend, that we have found one here
who is from our house at Jidda! for this young man, Ald-d-
A~iz, is a nephew of my father. He was going up, with a load
of carpets, to et-Tayif ; but I have engaged him to return with
thee to Jidda: only give him a present, — three reals. Khalil,
it has been difficult ! — for some in the Kahwa would make
trouble : they heard last night of the coming of a Nasrany ;
but by good adventure a principal slave of the Sherif is here,
who has made all well for you. Come with me and thank him :
and we (of the kafily) must depart immediately." — I found a
venerable negro sitting on the ground ; who rose to take me by
the hand : his name was Ma'abdb. Ibrahim, Sleyman, and the
rest of the Kusman now went out to mount their theluls ; when
I looked again they had ridden away. The son of Bessam
remained with me, who cried, "Mount! and Abd-el-Aziz mount
behind Khalil ! "— " Let me first fill the girby." "There is
water lower in the valley, only mount." " Mount, man ! " I
said ; and as he was up I struck-on the thelul : but there was
no spirit in the jaded beast, when a short trot had saved me.

I heard a voice of ill augury behind us, "Dismount, dis-
mount!— Let me alone I say, and I will kill the kafir." I
looked round, and saw him of the knife very nigh upon us ; who
with the blade in his hand, now laid hold on the bridle. — " Ho !
Jew, come down ! ho ! Nasrany (yells this fiend) ; I say down ! "
I was for moving on ; and but my dromedary was weak I had
then overthrown him, and outgone that danger. Other persons
were coming, — " Ndkh, nokh ! cries Abd-er-Rahman, make her
kneel and alight ! Khalil." This I did without show of reluc-
tance. He of the knife approached me, with teeth set fast, "to
slay, he hissed, the Yahudy-Nasrany " ; but the servitor of the
sherif, who hastened to us, entreated him to hold his hand. — I

268 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

whispered then to the son of Bessam, " Go call back some of the
kafily with their guns ; and let see if the guest of Aneyza may
not pass. Can these arrest me in a public way, without the
liadtid? " (borders of the sacred township). But he whispered,
" Only say, Khalil, thou art a Moslem, it is but a word, to
appease them ; and to-morrow thou wilt be at Jidda : thou
thyself seest — ! and wellah I am in dread that some of these
will kill thee." — " If it please God I will pass, whether they
will or no." " Eigh Khalil ! said he in that demiss voice of the
Arabs, when the tide is turning against them, what can I do ?
I must ride after the kafily ; look ! I am left behind." — He
mounted without more ; and forsook his father's friend among
murderers.

A throng of loitering Mecca cameleers, that (after their night
march) were here resting-out the hot hours, had come from the
Kahwa, with some idle persons of the hamlet, to see this novelty.
They gathered in a row before me, about thirty together, clad
in tunics of blue cotton. I saw the butcherly sword-knife, with
metal scabbard, of the country, javibieli, shining in all their
greasy leathern girdles. Those' Mecca faces were black as the
hues of the damned, in the day of doom : the men stood silent,
and holding their swarthy hands to their weapons.

The servitor of the Sherif (who was infirm and old), went back
out of the sun, to sit down, And after this short respite the
mad wretch came with his knife again and his cry, * that he
would slay the Yahudy-Nasrany ' ; and I remained standing
silently. The villain was a sherif ; for thus I had heard Maabub
name him : these persons of the seed of Mohammed ' are not to
be spoken against,' and have a privilege, in the public opinion,
above the common lot of mankind. The Mecca cameleers seemed
not to encourage him; but much less were they on my side.
[The sherif was a nomad : his fellows in this violence were one
or two thievish Hath^ylies of the hamlet ; and a camel driver,
his rafik, who was a Beduwy. His purpose and theirs was,
having murdered the kafir — a deed also of " religious " merit ! to
possess the thelul, and my things.]

When he came thus with his knife, and saw me stand still,
with a hand in my bosom, he stayed with wonder and dis-
couragement. Commonly among three Arabians is one mediator ;
their spirits are soon spent, and indifferent bystanders incline
to lenity and good counsel : I waited therefore that some would
open his mouth on my behalf ! — but there was no man. I
looked in the sclerat's eyes ; and totter-headed, as are so ,many
poor nomads, he might not abide it; but, heaving up his kh&njar,
he fetched a great breath (he was infirm, as are not few in

MAABflB AND THE ROBBER siil-idp 269

that lianvn lifr, at the middle age) and made feints with the
ipon at my chest; so with a sigh ho brought down his arm
;md div\v it to him airain. Then he lifted the knife und
measured his stroke: he \\as an iiinh-r^rou n man ; and watch-
ing his eyes I hoped to parry the stab on my left arm, — though
I stood but faintly on my feet, I might strike him away with
the other hand ; and when wounded justly defend myself with
my pistol, and break through them. Maabub had risen, and
came lamely again in haste ; and drew away the robber sherif :
and holding him by the hand, "What is this, he said, sherif
Salem ? you promised me to do nothing by violence ! Remember
Jidda bombarded ! — and that was for the blood of some of this
stranger's people ; take heed what thou doest. They are the
Engleys, who for one that is slain of them will send great battle-
ships ; and beat down a city. And thinkest thou our lord the
Sherif would spare thee, a bringer of these troubles upon him ?
—Do thou nothing against the life of this person, who is guilty
of no crime, neither was he found within the precincts of Mecca.
—No! sherif Salem, for Hasscyn (the Sherif Emir of Mecca)
our master's sake. Is the stranger a Nasrany ? he never denied
it : be there not Nasara at Jidda ? "

Maabub made him promise peace. Nevertheless the wolvish
nomad sherif was not so, with a word, to be disappointed of his
prey : for when the old negro went back to his shelter, he
approached anew with the knife ; and swore by Ullah that now
would he murder the Nasrany. Maabub seeing that, cried to
him, to remember his right mind ! and the bystanders made as
though they would hinder him. Salem being no longer counte-
nanced by them, and his spirits beginning to faint — so God gives
to the shrewd cow a short horn — suffered himself to be persuaded.
But leaping to the thelul, which was all he levelled at, "At least,
cries he, this is ndliab, rapine ! " He flung down my coverlet
from the saddle, and began to lift the great bags. Then one of
his companions snatched my headband and kerchief ; but others
blamed him. A light-footed Hatheyly ran to his house with
the coverlet; others (from the backward) plucked at my mantle:
the Mecca cameleers stood still in this hurly-burly. I took all
in patience ; and having no more need, here under the tropic,
I let go my cloak also. Maabub came limping again towards
us. He took my saddle-bags to himself ; and dragging them
apart, made me now sit by him. Salem repenting — when he
saw the booty gone from him — that he had not killed the
stranger, drew his knife anew ; and made toward me, with
hard-set (but halting) resolution appearing in his squalid visage ,
and crying out, that he would put to death the Yahudy-Nasrany :

270

WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

but now the bystanders withheld him. Madbub : " I tell thee,
Sherif Salem, that if thou have any cause against this stranger,
it must be laid before our lord the Sherif; thou maystdo nothing
violently." — " Oh ! but this is one who would have stolen
through our lord's country." — " Thou canst accuse him ; he
must in any wise go before our lord Hasseyn. I commit him
to thee Salem, teslim, in trust : bring him safely to Hasseyn, at
et-Tayif." The rest about us assenting to Maabub's reasons,
Salem yielded, — saying, "I hope it may please the Sherif to
hang this Nasrany, or cut off his head ; and that he will bestow
upon me the thelul." — Notwithstanding the fatigue and danger
of returning on my steps, it seemed to me some amends that I
should visit et-Tayif.

CHAPTER XIII

TAYIF. THE SHERlF, EMIR OF MECCA

THUS, Maabub who had appeased the storm, committed me to
the wolf! He made the thieves bring the things that they
had snatched from me ; but they were so nimble that all could
not be recovered. The great bags were laid again upon the
weary thelul, which was led back with us ; and the throng of
camel-men dispersed to the Kahwa shadows and their old repose.
— Maabub left me with the mad sherif ! and I knew not whither
he went.

Salem, rolling his wooden head with the soberness of a robber
bound over to keep the peace, said now, ' It were best to lock
up my bags.' He found a storehouse, at the Kahwa sheds ; and
laid them in there, and fastened the door, leaving me to sit on
the threshold : the shadow of the lintel was as much as might
cover my head from the noonday sun. — He eyed me wistfully.
" Well, Salem (I said), how now ? I hope we may yet be
friends." " Wellah, quoth he — after a silence, I thought to
have slain thee to-day ! " — The ungracious nomad hated my
life, because of the booty ; for afterward he showed himself to
be little curious of my religion ! Salem called me now more
friendly, " Khalil, Khalil ! " and not Nasrany.

— He left me awhile ; and there came young men of the
place to gaze on the Nasrany, as if it were some perilous beast
that had been taken in the toils. " Akhs ! — look at him ! this
is he, who had almost slipped through our hands. What think
ye ? — he will be hanged ? or will they cut his throat ? — Auh !
come and see ! here he sits, Ullah curse his father ! — Thou
cursed one ! akhs ! was it thus thou wouldst steal through the
beled of the Moslemin ? " Some asked me, " And if any of us
came to the land of the Nasara, would your people put us to
death with torments ? " — Such being their opinion of us, they
in comparison showed me a forbearance and humanity ! After
them came one saying, he heard I was a hakim ; and could I

272 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

cure his old wound ? I bade him return at evening and I would
dress it. " Thou wilt not be here then ! " cries the savage
wretch, — with what meaning I could not tell. Whatsoever I
answered, they said it was not so; "for thou art a kafir, the
son of a hound, and dost lie." It did their hearts good to gainsay
the Nasrany ; and in so doing it seemed to them they confuted
his pestilent religion.

I was a passenger, I told them, with a general passport of the
Sultan's government. One who came then from the Kahwa
cried out, * that he would know whether I were verily from the
part of the Dowla, or a Muskovy, — the man was like one who
had been a soldier : I let him have my papers ; and he went
away with them : but soon returning the fellow said, ' I lied
like a false Nasrany, the writings were not such as I affirmed.'
Then the ruffian — for this was all his drift — demanded with
flagrant eyes, ' Had I money ? ' — a perilous word ! so many of
them are made robbers by misery, the Mother of misdeed. —
When Salem came again they questioned me continually of the
thelul ; greedily desiring that this might become their booty.
I answered shortly, * It is the BessamsV — ' He says el-Bessam !
are not the Bessam great merchants ? and wellah meltik, like to
princes, at Jidda ! '

— Salem, who was returning from a visit to Mecca, had heard
by adventure at the Kahwa station, of the coming down of a
Nasrany : at first I thought he had it from some in the Boreyda
caravan. " It was not from them of Boreyda, he answered, —
Ullah confound all the Kusman ! that bring us kafirs : and
billah last year we turned back the Boreyda kafily from this
place." — The Kasim kafilies sometimes, and commonly the
caravans from Ibn Rashid's country, pass down to Mecca by
the Wady Laymun. I supposed that Salem had some charge
here ; and he pretended, * that the oversight of the station had
been committed to him by the Sherif '. — Salem was a nomad
sherif going home to his menzil : but he would not that I
should call him Beduwy. I have since found the nomad sherif s
take it very hardly if any name them Beduw ; and much less
would the ashraf that are settled in villages be named fdlaMn.
Such plain speech is too blunt in their noble hearing : a nomad
sherif told me this friendly, — " It is not well, he said, for they
are ashraf."

Now Salem bade me rise, and led to an arbour of boughs, in
whose shadow some of the camel-men were slumbering out the
hot mid-day. Still was the air in this Tehama valley, and I could
not put off my cloak, which covered the pistol ; yet I felt no

THE NASARA LIE NOT 273

extreme heat. When Salem and the rest were sleeping, a ]
old woman crept in ; who had somewhat to say to me, for she
asked aloud, ' Could I speak Ilindy?' I Vrli.-ips she was a bond-
servant going up with a Mecca family to et-Tayif, — the Hara-
meyn are full of Moslems of Ilindostany speech: it might
be she was of India. [In the Nejd quarter of Jidda is a spital
of such poor Indian creatures.] Some negro bondsmen, that
returned from their field labour, came about the door to look
in upon me : I said to them, ' Who robbed you from your
friends, and your own land? — I am an Engleysy, and had we
met with them that carried you over the sea, we had set you
free, and given you palms in a b&ed of ours.' The poor black
men answered in such Arabic as they could, ' They had heard
tell of it'; and they began to chat between them in their
African language. — One of the light sleepers startled ! and
sat up ; and rolling his eyes he swore by Ullah, * He had lost
through the Engleys, that took and burned a ship of his partners.'
I told them we had a treaty with the Sooltan to suppress
slavery. * I lied, responded more than one ferocious voice; when,
Nasrany, did the Sooltan forbid slavery ? ' * Nay, he may
speak the truth, said another; for the Nasara lie not.' —
' But he lies ! ' exclaimed he of the burned ship. — * By this
you may know if I lie ; — when I come to Jidda, bring a
bondman to my Konsulato : and let thy bondservant say he
would be free, and he shall be free indeed ! ' — * Dog ! cries
the fellow, thou liar ! — are there not thousands of slaves at
Jidda, tliat every day are bought and sold ? wherefore, thou
dog ! be they not all made free ? if thou sayest sooth : '
and he ground the teeth, and shook his villain hands in my
face.

Salem wakened late, when the most had departed : only a
few simple persons loitered before our door ; and some made
bold to enter. He rose up full of angry words against them.
* Away with you ! he cries, Ullah curse you all together ; Old
woman, long is thy tongue — what ! should a concubine make
talk : — and up, go forth, thou slave ! Ullah curse thy father !
shall a bondman come in hither ? ' — This holy seed of Mohammed
had leave to curse the poor lay people. But he showed now a
fair-weather countenance to me his prisoner : perhaps the sweet
sleep had helped his madman's brains. Salem even sent for
a little milk for me (which they will sell here, so nigh the city) :
but he made me pay for it excessively ; besides a real for a
bottle of hay, not worth sixpence, which they strewed down to
my theliil and their camels. Dry grass from the valley-sides

VOL. u. s

274 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

above, twisted rope- wise (as we see it in.the Neapolitan country),
is sold at this station to the cameleers.

It was now mid-afternoon : an ancient man entered ; and he
spoke long and earnestly with Salem. He allowed it just to
take a kafir's life, but perilous : ' the booty also was good he
said, but to take it were perilous ; ay, all this, quoth the honest
grey-beard, striking my camel-bags with his stick, is tom'a.
But thou Salem bring him before Hasseyn, and put not thyself
in danger.' Sdlem : " Ay wellah, it is all torn 'a ; but what is
the most tom'a of all ? — is it not the Nasrany's face ? look on
him ! is not this tom'a ? " I rallied the old man (who was per-
haps an Hatheyly of the hamlet, or a sherif) for his opinion,
'that the Nasara are God's adversaries.' His wits were not
nimble ; and he listened a moment to my words, — then he
answered soberly, " I can have no dealings with a kafir, except
thou repent : " so he turned from me, and said to Salem, " Eigh !
how plausible be these Nasranies ! but beware of them, Salem !
I will tell thee a thing, — it was in the Egyptian times. There
came hither a hakim with the soldiery : wellah Salem, I found
him sitting in one of the orchards yonder ! — Salaam aleyk !
quoth he, and I unwittingly answered, Aleykom es-salaam! —
afterward I heard he was a Nasrany ! akhs ! — but this is certain,
that one Moslem may chase ten Nasara, or a score of them ;
which is ofttimes seen, and even an hundred together ; and
Salem it is {thin (by the permission of) Ullah ! " " Well, I
hope Hasseyn will bestow on me the thelul ! " was Salem's
nomad-like answer.

— Seeing some loads of India rice, for Tayif, that were set
down before the Kahwa, I found an argument to the capacity
of the rude camel-men ; and touching them with my stick en-
quired, " What sacks be these ? and the letters on them ? if
any of you (ignorant persons) could read letters ? Shall I tell
you ? — this is rice of the Engleys, in sacks of the Engleys ; and
the marks are words of the Engleys. Ye go well clad ! — though
hareem wear this blue colour in the north ! but what tunics
are these ? — I tell you, the cotton on your backs was spun and
wove in mills of the Engleys. Ye have not considered that
ye are fed in part and clothed by the Engleys ! " Some con-
tradicted ; the most found that I said well. Such talk helped
to drive the time, disarmed their insolence, and damped the
murderous mind in Salem. But what that miscreant rolled in
his lunatic spirit concerning me I could not tell : I had caught
some suspicion that they would murder me in this place. If I
asked of our going to Tayif, his head might turn, and I should
see his knife again ; and I knew not what were become of

SET OUT FOR I AVI I'

). — Tln\y count thirty hours from IMMMN- to , for

their ant-paced ramrl trains: it, sivim-d unlikely that such a
hyena could so long abstain from my blood.

Late in the day ho came to me \vith Maaln'ib and Abd-t-1-
; whohadrested in another part of the Kahwa ! — surely
if there had been right worth in them (there was none in
Abd-el-Azi/), they had not left me alone in this case. Maabub
told me, I should depart at evening with tho caravan men ; and
so he left me again. Then Salem, with a mock zeal, would
have an inventory taken of my goods — and see the spoil ! he
called some of the unlettered cameleers to be witnesses. I
divw out all that was in my bags, and cast it before them : but
" El-flHst cl-flfa ! cries Salem with ferocious insistence, thy
money ! thy money ! that there may be afterward no question,
— show it all to me, Nasrany ! " — " Well, reach me that medicine
box ; and here, I said, are my few reals wrapped in a cloth ! "

The camel-men gathered sticks ; and made watch fires : they
took flour and water, and kneaded dough, and baked 'aMcl
under the ashes ; for it was toward evening. At length I saw
this daylight almost spent : then the men rose, and lifted the
loads upon their beasts. These town caravaners' camels march
in a train, all tied, as in Syria. — My bags also were laid upon
the Bessam's thelul : and Salem bade me mount with his com-
panion, Flu'-yd, the Beduin or half-Bed uin master of these
camels. — " Mount in the shidad ! Khalil Nasrany." [But thus
the radif might stab me from the backward, in the night !] I
said, I would sit back-rider; and was too weary to maintain
myself in the saddle. My words prevailed ! for all Arabs
tender the infirmity of human life, — even in their enemies.
Yet Salem was a perilous coxcomb ; for if anyone reviled the
Nasrany in his hearing, he made me cats' eyes and felt for his
knife again.

In this wise we departed ; and the Nasrany would be hanged,
as they supposed, by just judgment of the Sherif, at et-Tayif :
all night we should pace upward to the height of the Seyl.
Fheyd was in the saddle ; and the villain, in his superstition,
was adread of the Nasrdny ! Though malignant, and yet more
greedy, there remained a human kindness in him ; for under-
standing that I was thirsty he dismounted, and went to his
camels to fetch me water. Though I heard he was of the
Nomads, and his manners were such, yet he spoke nearly that
bastard Arabic of the great government towns, Damascus,
Bagdad, Mecca. But unreasonable was his impatience, because
I a weary man could not strike forward the jaded thelul to his

276 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

liking, — he thought that the Nasrany lingered to escape from
them !

A little before us, marched some Mecca passengers to et-
Tayif, with camel-litters. That convoy was a man's household :
the goodman, swarthy as the people of India and under the
middle age, was a wealthy merchant in Mecca. He went beside
his hareem on foot, in his white tunic only and turban; to
stretch his tawny limbs — which were very well made — and
breathe himself in the mountain air. [The heat in Mecca was
such, that a young Turkish army surgeon, whom I saw at et-
Tayif, told me he had marked there, in these days, 46° C.] Our
train of nine camels drew slowly by them : but when the smooth
Mecca merchant heard that the stranger riding with the camel-
men was a Nasrany, he cried, " Akhs ! a Nasrany in these
parts ! " and with the horrid inurbanity of their (jealous)
religion, he added, " Ullah ,curse his father ! " and stared on me
with a face worthy of the koran !

The caravan men rode on their pack-beasts eating their poor
suppers, of the bread they had made. Salem, who lay stretched
nomad-wise on a camel, reached me a piece, as I went by him ;
which beginning to eat I bade him remember, "that from
henceforth there was bread and salt between us, — and see, I
said, that thou art not false, Salem." — " Nay, wellah, I am not
~khayint no Khalil." The sickly wretch suffered old visceral
pains, which may have been a cause of his splenetic humour.—
He bye and bye blamed my nodding ; and bade me sit fast.
" Awake, Khalil ! and look up ! Close not thine eyes all this
night ! — I tell thee thou mayest not slumber a moment ; these
are perilous passages and full of thieves, — the Hatheyl ! that
steal on sleepers : awake ! thou must not sleep." The camels
now marched more slowly ; for the drivers lay slumbering upon
their loads : thus we passed upward through the weary night.
Fheyd left riding with me at midnight, when he went to stretch
himself on the back of one of his train of nine camels ; and a
driver lad succeeded him. Thus these unhappy men slumber
two nights in three : and yawn out the daylight hours, — which
are too hot for their loaded beasts — at the 'Ayn station or at
the Seyl.

The camels march on of themselves, at the ants' pace.—
" Khalil ! quoth the driver lad, who now sat in my saddle,
beware of thieves ! " Towards morning, we both nodded and
slumbered, and the thelul wandering from the path carried us
under an acacia : — happy I was, in these often adventures of
night-travelling in Arabia, never to have hurt an eye! My
tunic was rent ! — I waked ; and looking round saw one on foot

T1IK MAD SHKIMF 277

nigh behind us. — "What is that.?" quoth the strange
man, and leaping up he snatched at the worsted girdle which
I wore in riding ! I shook my fellow-rider awake, and struck-
on the thelul ; and asked the raw lad, ' If that man were one
of the cameleers ? ' — " Didst thou not see him among them ?
but this is a thief and would have thy money." The jaded
thrlul trotted a few paces and stayed. The man was presently
nigh behind me again : his purpose might be to pull me down ;
but were he an 1 1 at hey ly or what else, I could not tell. If I
struck him, and the fellow were a cameleer, would they not
say, ' that the Nasrtiny had beaten a Moslem ' ? He would not
go back ; and the lad in the saddle was heavy with sleep. I
found no better rede than to show him my pistol — but I took
this for an extreme ill fortune : so he went his way. — I heard
we should rest at the rising of the morning star : the planet
was an hour high, and the day dawning when we reached the
Seyl ground : where I alighted with Salem, under the spreading
boughs of a great old acacia tree.

There are many such menzil trees and shadows of rocks,
in that open station, where is no Kahwa : we lay down to
slumber, and bye and bye the sun rose. The sun comes up
with heat in this latitude; and the sleeper must shift his
place, as the shadows wear round. " Khalil (quoth the tor-
mentor) what is this much slumbering? — but the thing that
thou hast at thy breast, what is it ? show it all to me." — " I
have showed you all in my saddle-bags ; it is infamous to search
a man's person." — " Aha ! said a hoarse voice behind me, he
has a pistol ; and he would have shot at me last night." — It was
a great mishap, that this wretch should be one of the cameleers ;
and the persons about me were of such hardened malice in their
wayworn lives, that I could not waken in them any honourable
human sense. Sdlem : " Show me, without more, all that thou
hast with thee there (in thy bosom) ! " — There came about us
more than a dozen cameleers.

The mad sherif had the knife again in his hand ! and his old
gall rising, " Show me all that thou hast, cries he, and leave
nothing ; or now will I kill thee." — Where was Maabub ? whom
I had not seen since yester-evening : in him was the faintness
and ineptitude of Arab friends. — "Kemember the bread and
salt which we have eaten together, Salem ! " — " Show it all to
me, or now by Ullah 1 will slay thee with this knife." More
bystanders gathered from the shadowing places : some of them
cried out, " Let us hack him in morsels, the cursed one ! what
hinders? — fellows, let us hack him in morsels!" — "Have
patience a moment, and send these away." Salem, lifting his

278 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

knife, cried, " Except them show me all at the instant, I will
slay thee ! " But rising and a little retiring from them I said-
" Let none think to take away my pistol ! " — which I drew
from my bosom.

What should I do now ? the world was before me ; I thought,
Shall I fire, if the miscreants come upon me; and no shot
amiss? I might in the first horror reload,— my thelul was
at hand : and if I could break away from more than a score
of persons, what then? — repass the Ri'a, and seek Sh'aara
again ? where 'Ateyban often come-in to water ; which failing
I might ride at adventure : and though I met with no man
in the wilderness, in two or three days, it were easier to end
thus than to be presently rent in pieces. I stood between
my jaded thelul, that could not have saved her rider, and the
sordid crew of camel-men advancing, to close me in : they had
no fire-arms. — Fheyd approached, and I gave back pace for
pace : he opened his arms to embrace me ! — there was but a
moment, I must slay him, or render the weapon, my only
defence ; and my life would be at the discretion of these
wretches. — I bade him come forward boldly. There was not
time to shake out the shot, the pistol was yet suspended from
my neck, by a strong lace : I offered the butt to his handg. —
Fheyd seized the weapon ! they were now in assurance of their
lives and the booty : he snatched the cord and burst it. Then
came his companion Salem ; and they spoiled me of all that
I had ; and first my aneroid came into their brutish hands ;
then my purse, that the black-hearted Siruan had long worn in
his Turkish bosom at Kheybar. — Salem feeling no reals therein
gave it over to his confederate Fheyd ; to whom fell also my
pocket thermometer : which when they found to be but a toy
of wood and glass, he restored it to me again, protesting with
nefarious solemnity, that other than this he had nothing of
mine ! Then these robbers sat down to divide the prey in their
hands. The lookers-on showed a cruel countenance still ; and
reviling and threatening me, seemed to await Salem's rising, to
begin ' hewing in pieces the Nasrany '.

Salem and his confederate Fheyd were the most dangerous
Arabs that I have met with ; for the natural humanity of the
Arabians was corrupted in them, by the strong contagion of the
government towns. — I saw how impudently the robber sherif
attributed all the best of the stealth to himself ! Salem turned
over the pistol-machine in his hand : such Turks' tools he had
seen before at Mecca. Bat as he numbered the ends of the
bullets in the chambers, the miscreant was dismayed; and
thanked his God, which had delivered him from these six

SO IMWIMF ALL THK NASARA 279

deaths ! He considered the perilous instrument, and gazed on
me ; and seemed to balance in his heart, whether he should not
prove its shooting against the Nasrariy. " Akhs — akhs! G
HMMII' hard hostile voices, look how he carried this pistol to kill
the Moslemin ! Come now and we will hew him piecemeal :—
how those accursed Nasranies are full of wicked wiles! — 0
thou ! how many Moslems hast thou killed with that pistol ? "
" My friends, I have not fired it in the land of the Arabs. —
Salem, remember 'Ayn ez-Zeyma ! thou earnest with a knife to
kill me, but did I turn it against thee? Render therefore
thanks to Ullah ! and remember the bread and the salt, Salem."

— He bade his drudge Fheyd, shoot off the pistol ; and I
dreaded he might make me his mark. Fheyd fired the first
shots in the air : the chambers had been loaded nearly two
years ; but one after another they were shot off, — and that was
with a wonderful resonance ! in this silent place of rocks.
Salem said, rising, " Leave one of them ! " This last shot he
reserved for me ; and I felt it miserable to die here by their
barbarous hands without defence. " Fheyd, he said again, is all
sure ? — and one remains ? "

Salem glared upon me, and perhaps had indignation, that I
did not say, daTMlak : the tranquillity of the kafir troubled him.
When he was weary, he went to sit down and called me, " Sit,
quoth he, beside me." — " You hear the savage words of these
persons ; remember, Salem, you must answer for me to the
Sherif."— "The Sherif will hang thee, Nasrany ! Ullah curse
the Yahud and Nasara." Some of the camel-men said, " Thou
wast safe in thine own country, thou mightest have continued
there ; but since thou art come into the land of the Moslemin,
God has delivered thee into our hands to die : — so perish all the
Nasara! and be burned in hell with your father, Sheytan."
" Look ! I said to them, good fellows — for the most fault is
your ignorance, ye think I shall be hanged to-morrow : but
what if the Sherif esteem me more than you all, who revile me
to-day ! If you deal cruelly with me, you will be called to an
account. Believe my words ! Hasseyn will receive me as one
of the ullerna ; but with you men of the people, his subjects, he
will deal without regard." " Thou shalt be hanged, they cried
again, 0 thou cursed one ! " and after this they dispersed to
their several halting places.

— Soon afterward there came over to us the Mecca burgess ;
who now had alighted under some trees at little distance. From
this smooth personage, a flower of merchants in the holy city
— though I appealed to his better mind, that he should speak to
Salem, I could not draw a human word ; and he abstained from

280 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

evil. He gazed his fill ; and forsook me to go again to his
hareem. I watched him depart, and the robber sherif was
upbraiding me, that I had " hidden " the things and my pistol !
— in this I received a shock ! and became numbed to the
world : I sat in a swoon and felt that my body rocked and
shivered; and thought now, they had mortally wounded me
with a knife, or shot ! for I could not hear, I saw light thick
and confusedly. But coming slowly to myself, so soon as I
might see ground I saw there no blood : I felt a numbness
and deadness at the nape of the neck. Afterward I knew that
Fheyd had inhumanly struck me there with his driving-stick,
— and again, with all his force.

I looked up and found them sitting by me. I said faintly,
"Why have you done this?" Fheyd: "Because thou didst
withhold the pistol." " Is the pistol mine or thine ? I might
have shot thee dead ! but I remembered the mercy of Ullah."
A caravaner sat by us eating, — one that ceased not to rail
against me : he was the man who assailed me in the night, and
had brought so much mischief upon me. I suddenly caught his
hand with the bread ; and putting some in my mouth, I said to
him, " Enough, man ! there is bread and salt between us."
The wretch allowed it, and said not another word. I have never
found any but Salem a truce-breaker of the bread and salt, — but
he was of the spirituality.

— There came one riding to us on an ass ! it was Abd-el-Aziz !
He and Maabub had heard the shots, as they sat resting at some
distance yonder ! For they, who were journeying together to
et-Tayif, had arrived here in the night-time ; and I was not
aware of it. Maabub now sent this young man (unworthy of the
name of Bessam) to know what the shots meant, and what were
become of the Nasrany, — whether he yet lived? Abd-el-Aziz
seeing the pistol in Salem's hands and his prisoner alive, asked,
* Wherefore had he taken away the man's pistol ? ' I said to
him, " You see how these ignorant men threaten me : speak
some word to them for thine uncle Abdullah's sake." But he,
with sour fanatical looks ; " Am I a Frenjy ? " — and mounting
again, he rode out of sight.

After these haps ; Salem having now the spoil in his hands,
and fearing to lose it again at et-Tayif, had a mind to send me
down to Jidda, on the Bessam's thelul. — " Ha ! Khalil, we are
become brothers ; Khalil, are we not now good friends ? there is
nothing more betwixt us. What sayest thou ? wilt thou then
that we send thee to Jidda, and I myself ride with thee on the
thelul ? "—But I answered, " I go to visit the Sherif, at Tayif ;
and you to accuse me there, and clear yourselves before him ; at

Till-] NASKANT AMONG THIEVI 281

•Jidda you would be put in prison." Some bystanders cri»-d,
"Let him go to et-Tfiyil'."

— A messenger returned from Maabub, bidding Salem, Khalil
and Fheyd come to him. As we went I looked back, and saw
Fheyd busy to rifle my camel-bags ! — after that he followed us.
The young Bessam was sitting under the shadow of some rocks
with Maabub. — "Are you men? quoth Maabub, are you men?
who have so dealt with this stranger ! " I told him how they
robbed me, and what I had suffered at their hands : I was yet
(and long afterward) stunned by the blows on the neck. Maabdb :
" Sherif Salem, thou art to bring this stranger to our lord
Hasseyn at et-Tayif, and do him no wrong by the way. How
canst thou rob and wound one who is committed to thy trust,
like the worst Beduin thieves ? but I think verily that none of
the Beduw would do the like. Sdlem : " Is not this a Nasrany ?
he might kill us all by the way ; we did but take his pistol,
because we were afraid." Maabilb : " Have you taken his silver
from him and his other things, because ye were afraid? — I
know thee, Salem ! but thou wilt have to give account to our
lord the Sherif: " — so he dismissed us ; and we returned to our
place.

It came into my mind, bye and bye, to go again to Maabub :
the sand was as burning coals under my bare feet, so that after
every few steps I must fall on my knees to taste a moment's
relief. — Maabub was Umbrella-bearer of the Sherif; and an old
faithful servitor of his brother, the late Sherif. " Wherefore, I
asked, had he so strangely forsaken me hitherto ? Or how
could he commit me to that murderous Salem ! whom he him-
self called a mad sherif; did he look to see me alive at Tayif !
— I am now without defence, at the next turn he may stab me ;
do thou therefore ride with me on the theliil ! " — " Khalil,
because of an infirmity [sarcocele] I cannot mount in a saddle."
When I said, I would requite his pains, the worthy negro
answered, " That be far from me ! for it is my duty, which I owe
to our lord, the Sherif : but if thou have a remedy for my disease,
I pray thee, remember me at et-Tayif." — The young Bessam had
fever, with a daily crisis. It came on him at noon ; and then
he who lately would not speak a word to shelter the Frenjy's
life, with a puling voice (as they are craven and unmanly),
besought me to succour him. I answered, ' At et-Tayif ! '
Had he aided me at the first, for his good uncle's sake, I had
not now been too faint to seek for remedies. I promised, if he
would ride with me to-night, to give him a medicine to cut the
fever, to-morrow : but Arabs put no trust in distant promises.

It drew to the mid-afternoon, when I heard we should remove ;

282 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

and then the foolish young Bessam bade me rise and help to
load the carpets on his camel. I did not deny him ; but had
not much strength ; and Maabub, blaming the rashness of the
young man, would have me sit still in the shadow. — Maabub
rode seated on the load of carpets; and when the camel arose
under him, the heavy old negro was nigh falling. Once more
I asked him. not to forsake me ; and to remember how many
were the dark hours before us on the road.

I returned hastily to our menzil tree. The caravaners had
departed ; and the robber sherif , who remained with the thelul,
was chafing at my delay : he mounted in the saddle, and I
mounted again back-rider. — Salem had a new companion, who
rode along with us, one Ibrahim of Medina, lately landed at
Jidda ; and who <would soon ride homeward in the ' little pil-
grimage '. Ibrahim hearing what countryman I was began to
say, " That an Engleysy came in the vessel with him to Jidda ;
— who was wellah a good and perfect Moslem ! yesterday he
entered Mecca, and performed his devotion : — and this Engleysy
that I tell you of, sherif Salem, is now sojourning at Mecca,
to visit the holy places." — Ibrahim was one who lying under
our awning tree, where he had arrived late, had many times
disdained me, crying out despitef ully, " Dog ! dog ! thou dog ! "
But as we rode he began to smile upon the Nasrany betwixt
friendly and fiendly : at last quoth he, " Thou wast at Hayil ;
and dost thou not remember me? — I have spoken with thee
there ; and thou art Khalil." — How strange are these meetings
again in the immensity of empty Arabia ! but there is much
resort to Hayil ; and 1 had passed a long month there. The
light-bodied Arabian will journey, upon his thelul, at foot-pace,
hundreds of leagues for no great purpose : and little more
troubles him than the remembrance that he is absent from his
household and children. "Thou hast known me then a long
time in these countries ; now say on before these strangers, if
thou canst allege aught against me." — " Well none, but thy
misreligion."

Ibrahim rode upon a dromedary ; his back-rider was an
envenomed cameleer ; who at every pause of their words shook
his stick at me : and when he walked he would sometimes leap
two paces, as it were to run upon the kafir. There was a danger
iu Salem's seeing another do me wrong, — that in such he would
not be out-done, and I might see his knife again : so I said to
Ibrahim (and stroked my beard), "By thy beard, man ! and for
our old acquaintance at Hayil — ! " Ibrahim acknowledged the
token ; and began to show the Nasrany a more friendly coun-
tenance. " Ibrahim, did you hear that the Engleys are a bad

'KAT/j 283

p,Mi|il«>? "—"Nay, lciilli-*h f<ii/il>, fr«m<l every whit." — "Are they
the Sultan's friends, or foes? " — " His friends! the Engleys help
him in the wars." Minn : "Well Khalil, l«-t this pass; but
tell me, what is the religion of the Nasara ? I thought surely
it was some horrible thing! " — " Fear God and love thy neigh-
bour, this is the Chri>t inn ivligiim, — the way of Aysa bin-Miriam,
from the spirit of Ullah." — " Who is Aysa? — hast thon heard
this name, Ibrahim ? " — " Ullah curse Aysa and the father of
Aysa, cries Ibrahim's nulif. Akhs! what have we to do with
thy religion, Nasniny ? " Ibrahim answered him very soberly,
" But thou with this word makest thyself a kafir, blasphemi;
prophet of the prophets of Ullah ! " The cameleer answered,
h; ;i If -aghast, "The Lord be my refuge! — I knew not that Aysa
was a prophet of the Lord ! " " What think'st thon, Salem ? "—
'• \Vellah Khalil, I cannot tell: but how sayest thou, Spirit of
Ullali ! — is this your kafir talk ? " — " You may read it in the
koran,— say, Ibrahim ? "— " Ay indeed, Khalil.'"

There were many passengers in the way ; some of whom
bestowed on me an execration as we rode-by them, and Salem
lent his doting ears to all their idle speech : his mind wavered
at every new word. — " Do not listen to them, Salem, it is they
who are the Nasara!" He answered, like a Nomad, "Ay
billah, they are Beduw and kafirs ; — but such is their ignorance
in these parts ! " Ibrahim's radif could not wholly forget his
malevolence; and Salem's brains were beginning again to
unsettle : for when I said, " But of all this ye shall be better
instructed to-morrow : " he cried out, " Thou liest like a false
Nasrany, the Sherif will cut off thy head to-morrow, or hang
thee : — and, Ibrahim, I hope that our lord will recompense me
with the thelul."

We came to a seyl bed, of granite-grit, with some growth of
pleasant herbs and peppermints ; and where holes may be digged
to the sweet water with the hands. Here the afternoon way-
farers to Tayif alight, to drink and wash themselves to prayer-
ward. [This site is said to be 'Okdtz, the yearly parliament and
vaunting place of the tribes of Arabia before Islam : the altitude
is between 5000 and 6000 feet.] As we halted Abd-el-Aziz and
Maabiib journeyed by us ; and I went to ask the young Bessam
if he would ride with me to-night, — and I would reward him ?
He excused himself, because of the fever: but that did not
hinder his riding upon an ass. — Salem was very busy-headed to
know what I had spoken with them ; and we remounted.

Now we ascended through strait places of rocks ; and came
upon a paved way, which lasts for some miles, with steps and

284 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

passages opened by blasting ! — this path had .been lately made
by Turkish engineers at the Government cost. After that we
journeyed in a pleasant steppe which continues to et-Tayif.

We had outmarched the slow caravan, and were now alone in
the wilderness: Ibrahim accompanied us, — I had a doubtful
mind of him. They said they would ride forward : my wooden
dromedary was cruelly beat and made to run ; and that was to
me an anguish. — Salem, had responded to some who asked the
cause of our haste, as we outwent them on the path, ' that he
would be rid of the Nasrany : ' he murmured savage words ;
so that I began to doubt whether these who rode with me
were not accorded to murder the Nasrany, when beyond sight.
The spoilers had not left me so much as a penknife : at the
Seyl I had secretly bound a stone in my kerchief, for a
weapon.

At length the sun set: it is presently twilight ; and Ibrahim
enquired of Salem, wherefore he rode thus, without ever slack-
ing. Sdlem: "But let us outride them and sleep an hour at
the midway, till the camels come by us. — Khalil, awake thou
and sleep not ! (for I nodded on his back ;) Auh ! hold thine
eyes open ! this is a perilous way for thee : " but I slumbered
on, and was often in danger of falling. Bye and bye looking
up, I saw that he gazed back upon me ! So he said more softly,
" Sleepest thou, Khalil Nasrany ? — what is this ! when I told
thee no; thou art not afraid!" — "Is not Ullah in every
place ? " — " Ay, wellah Khalil." Such pious words are honey-
combs to the Arabs, and their rude hearts are surprised with
religion. — " Dreadest thou not to die ! " — " I have not so lived,
Moslem, that I must fear to die." The wretch regarded me !
and I beheld again his hardly human visage : the cheeks were
scotched with three gashes upon a side ! It is a custom in these
parts, as in negro Africa ; where by such marks men's tribes may
be distinguished.

Pleasant is the summer evening air of this high wilderness.
We passed by a watering-place amongst trees, and would have
halted : but Ibrahim answered not to our call ! — he had out-
ridden us in the gloom. Salem, notwithstanding the fair words
which lately passed between them, now named him "impudent
fellow " and cursed him. " And who is the man, Salem ? I
thought surely he had been a friend of thine." — " What makes
him my friend ? — Sheytan ! I know of him only that he is
from Medina." — Bye and bye we came up with him in the
darkness ; and Ibrahim said, ' They had but ridden forward to
pray. And here, quoth he, is a good place ; let us alight and
sup.' They had bread, and I had dates: we sat down to eat

NEAR TAYIF 285

together. Only the radif held aloof, fearing it might l>e unlaw-
ful to eat with a kalir: but when, at their bidding, he had pur-
taken with us, even this man's malice abated. — I asked Ibmi
Did he know the Nejumy family at Medina? " Well, he said,
1 know them, — they are but smiths."

We mounted and rode forward, through the open plain ; and
saw many glimpsing camp-fires of nomads. Salem was for
turning aside to some of them ; where, said he, we might drink
a little milk. It had been dangerous for the kafir, and I was
glad when we passed them by ; although I desired to see the
country Aarab. — We came at length to the mandkh or midway
li alt ing-place of passengers : in the dim night I could see some
high clay building, and a thicket of trees. Not far off are
other outlying granges and hamlets of et-Tayif. We heard
asses braying, and hounds barking in nomad menzils about us.
We alighted and lay down here on the sand in our mantles ; and
slumbered two hours : and then the trains of caravan camels,
slowly marching in the path, which is beaten hollow, came by us
again : the cameleers lay asleep upon their loads. We remounted,
and passing before them in the darkness we soon after lost the
road : Ibrahim said now, they would ride on to et-Tayif, without
sleeping ; and we saw him no more.

In the grey of the morning I could see that we were come to
orchard walls ; and in the growing light enclosures of vines, and
fig trees ; but only few and unthriving stems of palms [which
will not prosper at Tayif, where both the soil and the water are
sweet]. And now we fell into a road — a road in Arabia ! I had
not seen a road and green hedges since Damascus. We passed
by a house or two built by the way-side ; and no more such as
the clay beyts of Arabia, but painted and glazed houses of
Turkey. We were nigh et-Tayif ; and went before the villa of
the late Sherif, where he had in his life-time a pleasure-ground,
with flowers ! [The Sherifs are commonly Stambul bred men.]
— The garden was already gone to decay.

Salem turned the thelul into a field, upon our right hand ; and
we alighted and sat down to await the day. He left me to go
and look about us; and I heard a bugle-call, — Tayif is a
garrisoned place. When Salem returned he found me slumber-
ing ; and asked, if I were not afraid ? We remounted and
had ado to drive the dromedary over a luke-warm brook, running
strongly. So we came to a hamlet of ashraf, which stands a
little before et-Tayif; and drew bridle a moment ere the
sunrising, at the beyt of a cousin of Salem.

He called to them within, by name ! — none answered. The

286 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

goodman was on a journey ; and his wives could not come forth
to us. But they, hearing Salem's voice, sent a boy, who bore
in our things to the house ; and we followed him. This poor
home in the Mecca country was a small court of high clay wall-
ing ; with a chamber or two, built under the walls. There we
found two (sherif) women; and they were workers of such
worsted coverlets in yarns and colours as we have seen at
Teyma. — And it was a nomad household ; for the hareem told
me they lived in tents, some months of the year, and drank milk
of the small cattle and camels. Nomad-like was also the bare-
ness of the beyt, and their misery : for the goodman had left
them naught save a little meal ; of which they presently baked
a. cake of hardly four ounces, for the guests' breakfast. Their
voices sounded hollow with hunger, and were broken with sigh-
ing ; but the poor noble-women spoke to us with a constant
womanly mildness : and ,1 wondered at these courtly manners,
which I had not seen hitherto in Arabia. They are the poor
children of Mohammed. The Sultan of Islam might reverently
kiss the hand of the least sherif ; as his wont is to kiss the hand
of the elder of the family of the Sherifs of Mecca (who are his
pensioners — and in a manner his captives), at Stambul.

It had been agreed between us, that no word should be said
of my alien religion. Salem spoke of me as a stranger he had
met with in the way. It was new to me, in these jealous coun-
tries, to be entertained by two lone hareem. This pair of pen-
sive women (an elder and younger) were sister-wives of one,
whom we should esteem an indigent person. There was no
coffee in that poor place ; but at Salem's request they sent
out to borrow of their neighbours : the boy returned with
six or seven beans ; and of these they boiled for us, in an
earthen vessel (as coffee is made here), a thin mixture, — which
we could not drink ! When the sun was fairly risen, Salem
said he would now go to the Sherif's audience ; and he left me.
— I asked the elder hostess of the Sherif. She responded,
" Hasseyn is a good man, who has lived at Stambul from his
youth ; and the best learned of all the learned men here : yet
is he not fully such as Abdullah (his brother), our last Sherif,
who died this year, — the Lord have him in His mercy ! And he
is not white as Abdullah ; for his mother was a (Galla) bond-
woman."— It seemed that the colour displeased them, for they
repeated, " His mother was a bond- woman ! — but Hasseyn is a
good man and just ; he has a good heart."

Long hours passed in this company of sighing (hunger-
stricken) women ; who having no household cares were busy,
whilst I slumbered, with their worsted work. — It was toward

Till- BETE 0V T\Yir 287

high noun, \vii«-n s.-d.-m tutored, "Good tiding ! W

Kliahl, <|imtli h": our lord tin- Sherif sends thee to lodge in
fche honae of a Toork Up! let us be going ; and we have little
f'urt in-r to rid.'.1 Ho bow out the bags himself, and laid them
on my fainting tliolul ; and we departed. I'Yom the next rising-
Around I saw et-T;iyif! tin* aspect is gloomy, for all t
building is of slate-coloured stone. At the entering of the
town stands the white palace of the Sherif, of two stories ; and
in face of it a new and loftier building with latticed balconies,
and the roof full of chimneys, which is the palace of Abdillah
Pasha, Hasseyn's brother. In the midst of the town appears a
great and high building, like a prison; that is the soldiers'
quarters.

— The town now before my eyes ! after nigh two years'
wandering in the deserts, was a wonderful vision. Beside our
way I saw men blasting the (granite) rock for building-stone. —
The site of Tayif is in the border of the plutonic steppe, over
which I had lately journeyed, a hundred leagues from el-Kasim.
I beheld also a black and cragged landscape, with low moun-
tains, beyond the town. We fell again into the road from the
Seyl, and passed that lukewarm brook ; which flows from yonder
monsoon mountains, and is one of the abounding springs which
water this ancient oasis. The water-bearers — that wonted sight
of Eastern towns ! went up staggering from the stream, under
their huge burdens of full goat-skins ; — there are some of their
mighty shoulders that can wield a camel load ! Here a Turkish
soldier met us, with rude smiles ; and said, he came to lead me
to the house where I should lodge. The man, a Syrian from
the (Turkish) country about Antioch, was the military servant
of an officer of the Sherif : that officer at the Sherif's bidding
would receive me into his house.

The gate, where we entered, is called Bab es-Seyl ; and within
is the open place before the Sherif's modest palace. The streets
are rudely built, the better houses are daubed with plaster : and
the aspect of the town, which is fully inhabited only in the
summer months, is ruinous. The ways are unpaved : and we
see here the street dogs of Turkish countries. A servant from
the Sherif waited for me in the street, and led forward to a
wicket gate : he bade me dismount, — and here, heaven be
praised ! he dismissed Salem. " I will bring thee presently,
quoth the smiling servitor, a knife and a fork ; also the Sherif
bids me ask, wouldst thou drink a little tea and sugar?"
these were gentle thoughts of the homely humanity of the
Prince of Mecca !

Then the fainting thelul, which had carried me more than

288 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

four hundred and fifty miles without refreshment, was led away
to the Sherif s stables ; and my bags were borne up the house
stairs. The host, Colonel Mohammed, awaited me on the landing ;
and brought me into his chamber. The tunic was rent on my
back, my mantle was old and torn ; the hair was grown down
under my kerchief to the shoulders, and the beard fallen and
unkempt ; I had bloodshot eyes, half blinded,]and the scorched
skin was cracked to the quick upon my face. A barber was
sent for, and the bath made ready : and after a cup of tea, it
cost the good colonel some pains to reduce me to the likeness
of the civil multitude. Whilst the barber was doing, the stal-
wart Turkish official anointed my face with cooling ointments ;
and his hands were gentle as a woman's, — but I saw no break-
fast in that hospice ! After this he clad me, my weariness and
faintness being such, like a block, in white cotton military
attire ; and set on my head a fez cap.

This worthy officer, whose name and style was Mohammed

Klwiry, Effendy, ydwer (aide de camp) es-Sherif, told me the

Sherif's service is better (being duly paid) than to serve the

Dowla : he was Bim-l>ashy , or captain of a thousand, in the

imperial army. Colonel Mohammed was of the Wilayat Konia

in Anatoly. He detested the corrupt officiality of Stambul,

and called them traitors ; because in the late peace-making

they had ceded provinces, which were the patrimony of Islam :

the great embezzling Pashas, he exclaimed, betrayed the army.

With stern military frankness he denounced their Byzantine

vices, and the (alleged) drunkenness of the late Sultan ! — In

Colonel Mohammed's mouth was doubtless the common talk of

Turkish officers in Mecca and et-Tayif. But he spoke, with

an honest pride, of the provincial life in his native country ;

where is maintained the homely simplicity of the old Turkish

manners. He told me of his bringing up, and the charge

of his good mother, " My son, speak nothing but the truth !

abhor all manner of vicious living." He remembered from

his childhood, c when some had (but) broken into an orchard

by night and stolen apples, how much talk was made of it ' !

Such is said to be the primitive temper of those peoples! —

And have here a little tale, told me by a true man, — the thing

happened amongst Turkoman and Turkish peasants in his

own village, nigh Antioch. "An old husbandman found a

purse in his field ; and it was heavy with silver. But he

having no malice, hanged it on a pole, and went on crying

down the village street, 'Did ye hear, my neighbours, who

has lost this purse here ? ' And when none answered, the

poor old man delivered the strange purse to the Christian

TURKISH OFFICERS

priest ; bidding him keep it well, until the owner should call
for it."

— Heavy footfalls sounded on the stair ; and there entered
two Turkish officers. The first, a tall martial figure, the host's
namesake, and whom he called his brother, was the Sherlfs
second aide de camp ; and the friends had been brothers in
arms these twenty years. With him came a cavalry aga ; an
Albanian of a bony and terrible visage, which he used to rule
his barbarous soldiery ; but the poor man was milder than he
seemed, and of very good heart. He boasted himself to be of
the stock of Great " Alexander of the horns twain " ; but was
come in friendly wise to visit me, a neighbour of Europa. He
spoke his mind — five or six words coming confusedly to the
birth together, in a valiant shout : and when I could not find
the sense ; for he babbled some few terms that were in his
remembrance of Ionian Italian and of the border Hellenes, he
framed sounds, and made gestures ! and looking stoutly, was
pleased to seem to discourse with a itranger in foreign lan-
guages. The Captain (who knew not letters) would have me
write his name too, Mahmttd Aga el-Arnauty, Aim Sammachaery
(of) Praevaesa, Mz-bashy. Seven years he had served in these
parts ; but he understood not the words of the inglorious Arabs,
— he gloried to be of the military service of the Sultan ! though
he seldom-times received his salary. This worthy was years
before (he told me) a kaw&s of the French Consulate in Corfu ;
where he had seen the English red frieze coats. " Hi Anyli
— huh-huh ! the English (be right strong) quoth he. But the
Albanians, huh ! — the Albanians have a great heart ! — heart
makes the man ! — makes him good to fight ! — Aha ; they have it
strong and steadfast here ! " and he smote the right hand upon
his magnanimous chest. The good fellow looked hollow, and
was in affliction : Colonel Mohammed told me his wife died
suddenly of late ; and that he was left alone with their children.
— The other, Mohammed Aga, was a man curious to observe
and hard to please, of polite understanding more than my host :
he spoke Arabic smoothly and well for a Turk. In the last
mpnths they had seen the Dowla almost destroyed in Europe :
they told me, ' there was yet but a truce and no sure peace ;
that England was of their part, and had in these days sent
an army by sea from India, — which passed by Jidda — an hun-
dred thousand men ! ' Besides, the Nemsy (Austria) was for
the Sultan ; and they looked for new warfare.

Toward evening, after a Turkish meal with my host, there

VOL. II. T

290 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

entered a kawas of the Sherif; who brought a change of
clothing for me. — And when they had clad me as an Arab
sheykh ; Colonel Mohammed led me through the twilight street,
to the Sherif's audience : the ways were at this hour empty.

Some Bisha guards stand on the palace stairs ; and they
made the reverence as we passed to the Sherif's officer : other
men-at-arms stand at the stair's head. There is a waiting
chamber ; and my host left me, whilst he went forward to the
Sherif. But soon returning he brought me into the hall of
audience ; where the Sherif Emir of Mecca sits daily at certain
hours — in the time of his summer residence at et-Tayif — much
like a great Arabian sheykh among the musheyikh. Here the
elders, and chief citizens, and strangers, and his kinsmen, are
daily assembled with the Sherif : for this is the mejlis, and
coffee-parliament of an Arabian Prince ; who is easy of access
and of popular manners, as was Mohammed himself.

The great chamber was now void of guests : only the Sherif
sat there with his younger brother, Abdillah Pasha, a white
man and strongly grown like a Turk, with the gentle Arabian
manners. Hasseyn Pasha [the Sherif bears this Ottoman
title !] is a man of a pleasant face, with a sober alacrity of the
eyes and humane demeanour; and he speaks with a mild and
cheerful voice : hie age might be forty-five years. He seemed,
as he sat, a manly tall personage of a brown colour ; and large
of breast and limb. The Sherif was clad in the citizen-wise
of the Ottoman towns, in a long blue jutiba of pale woollen
cloth. He sat upright on his diwan, like an European, with a
comely sober countenance ; and smoked tobacco in a pipe like
the " old Turks ". The simple earthen bowl was set in a saucer
before him : his white jasmine stem was almost a spear's length.
— He looked up pleasantly, and received me with a gracious
gravity. A chair was set for me in face of the Sherif : then
Col. Mohammed withdrew, and a servitor brought me a cup of
coffee.

The Sherif enquired with a quiet voice, " Did I drink
coffee ? " I said, " We deem this which grows in Arabia to be
the best of all ; and we believe that the coffee plant was brought
into Arabia from beyond the (Red) Sea."—" Ay, I think that
it was from Abyssinia : are they not very great coffee-drinkers
where you have been, in Nejd ? " Then the Sherif asked me of
the aggression at 'Ayn ez-Zeyma ; and of the new aggression
at the Seyl. " It were enough, he said, to make any man afraid.
[Alas ! Hasseyn himself fell shortly, by the knife of an assassin,
—it was the second year after, at Jidda : and with the same
affectuous cheerfulness and equanimity with which he had lived,

THE SHERIF OF MECCA : AUDIENCE 291

he breathed forth his innocent spirit ; in the arms of a country-
man of ours, Dr. Gregory Wortabet, then resident Ottoman
Officer of Health for the lied Sea.] — But now you have arrived,
he added kindly ; and the jeopardy (of your long voyage) is
past. Take your rest at Tayif, and when you are refreshed I
will send you down to the English Consul at Jidda." lie asked,
1 Had I never thought of visiting et-Tayif ? — it had been better,
he added, if I were come hither at first from the Seyl ; and he
would have sent me to Jidda.' The good Sherif said further,
" Neither is this the only time that Europeans have been here ;
for — I think it was last year — there came one with the consul
of Hollanda, to visit an inscription near the Seyl ; — I will give
charge that it may be shown to you, as you return." I answered,
' I knew of one (Burckhardt) who came hither in the time of
the Egyptian warfare.' — The Sherif looked upon me with a
friendly astonishment ! [from whence, he wondered, had I this
knowledge of their home affairs ?] — The subtle Sherif of Mecca,
who was beguiled and dispatched by the old Albanian fox
Mohammed Aly, might be grand uncle of this worthy Prince.

" And how, he asked, had I been able to live with the
Beduw, and to tolerate their diet ? — And found you the Beduw
to be such as is reported of them [in the town romances], or
fall they short of the popular opinion [of their magnanimity] ?
— Did you help at the watering? and draw up the buckets
hand over hand — thus ? " And with the Arabian hilarity the
good Sherif laid-by his demesurate pipe-stem ; and he made
himself the gestures of the nomad waterers ! (which he had
seen in an expedition). There is not I think a natural Arabian
Prince — but it were some sour Wah£by — who might not have
done the like ; they are all pleasant men. — " I had not strength
to lift with them." He responded, with a look of human kind-
ness, " Ay, you have suffered much ! "

He enquired then of my journey ; and I answered of Medain
Salih, Teyma, Hayil : he was much surprised to hear that I had
passed a month — so long had been the tolerance of a tyrant ! —
in Ibn Bashid's town. He asked me of Mohammed ibn Kashid,
* Did I take him for a good man ? ' — plainly the Sherif, not-
withstanding the yearly presents which he receives from thence,
thought not this of him : and when I answered a little beside
his expectation, " He is a worthy man," Hasseyn was not
satisfied. Then we spoke of Aneyza ; and the Sherif enquired
of Zamil, "Is he a good man?" Finally he asked, 'if the
garments [his princely gift] in which I sat clad before him
pleased me ? ' and if my host showed me (which he seemed to
distrust) a reasonable hospitality ? Above an hour had passed ;

292 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA

then Colonel Mohammed, who had been waiting without, came
forward ; and I rose to take my leave. The Sherif spoke to my
host, for me; and especially that I should walk freely in et-Tayif,
and without the walls ; and visit all that I would. — Colonel
Mohammed kissed the venerable hand of the Sherif, and we
departed. * * *

* * * On the morrow . . . Col. Mohammed entered, — and
then Salem : whom the Sherif had commanded to restore all that
he and his confederate robbed from me. The miserable thief
brought the pistol (now broken !), the aneroid, and four reals,
which he confessed to have stolen himself from my bags. He
said now, " Forgive me, Khalil ! and, ah ! remember the zad
(food) and the inelh (salt) which is between us." " And why
didst thou not remember them at the Seyl, when thou tookest
the knife, a second- time, to kill me?" Col. Mohammed:
"Khalil says justly; why then didst thou not remember the
bread and salt ? " — " I am guilty, but I hope the Sherif may
overlook it ; and be not thou against me, Khalil ! " I asked
for the purse and the other small things. But Salem denying
that they had anything more ! Col. Mohammed drove him out,
and bade him fetch them instantly. — " The cursed one ! quoth
my host, as he went forth : the Sherif has determined after
your departure to put him in irons, as well as the other man
who struck you. He will punish them with severity, — but not
now, because their kindred might molest you as you go down
to Jidda. And the Sherif has written an injunction, which will
be sent round to all the tribes and villages within his dominion,
' That in future, if there should arrive any stranger among them
they are to send him safely to the Sherif ' : for who knows if some
European may not be found another time passing through the
Sherif 's country ; and he might be mishandled by the ignorant
people. Also the Sherif would have no after-questions with
their governments."

(After resting for four days at Tdyif Doughty sets forth on the
last stage of his journey, with a guard of three men appointed ly the
Sherif. He reaches Jidda without mishap, and is there " called
to the open hospitality of the JBritish Consulate")

THE END.

o Signifies Settlement
••• Ruined Site
^ Watering
A Camping Place
Kella

Longitude East 36° of Greenwich

I I

A Sketch Map of Part of
NORTH WESTERN ARABIA

by Cliarlcs M. Doughty
N.,v. 11176 I,) An,:. ifl7fl MI Ainhia, Mny At Jun»- «n7S MI

^^M^Zeyr

• — o-j-
Mecca

SHORT GLOSSARY OF ARABIC TERMS

Abd, slave; in Arabia, any one
of servile condition, whether
bond or free ; a black man.

•', hasty bread baked under
the embers.
. enemy.

'Agab, the small brown eagle of
the desert.

Agld, the leader of a foray.

Akhuy brother.

Akkdm, a camel driver in the
pilgrimage.

Asily, one of noble stock.

Askar, soldier.

el-Assr, mid-afternoon.

Ayb, shame.

Ayn, spring ; also eye.

Aziz, beloved.

Bab, gate.

Baggl, dry milk shar«l>.

BcdcMl, niggard.

Bakhiir, incense.

Bdraka, blessing.

Battdl, idle, bad.

Bedan, the ibex.

Belah, the ripening date berries.

Beted t the country soil, a!

settlement, and at Kheybar,

a palm -yard.
Bendt, pi. of bint.
Beny, pi. of ibn, son: said of a

tribe ; which are accounted as

children, of a common ancestor.
Berkda, woman's face-cloth ; veil.
Berstm, vetches.
Beyt, abode, booth, house.

VOL. II.

/, tho camels of a nomad
tribe.

', l.y LTllah !
Bint, daughter, maiden.

well-pit.
Birket, cistern.

Bismittah, in the name of Ullah.
Bogh&z, strait, between cliffs.
Borghrolj prepared wheat, of which
porridge is made, in Syria.

, metal ewer.
Bunn, coffee-powder.
Bustan (Persian, heard only in
townsmen's speech), an or-
chard.

Dctb, snake.

Dalil, a guide, a shower of the
way.

Dar, a house, a court, a camping-
ground of nomads.

Dawwa, medicine; also condi-
ments.

Delicti, cofiee-pots.

Dettdl, running broker, in the
bazar.

Derb, the beaten way, path.

Deyik es-sudr, constraint of heart.

Dibba, pumpkin.

. religion; also national cus-
tom.

Dira, a nomad tribe's circuit, or
oasis settlement.

Dokdn, shop.

Dowta, the Ottoman Govern-
ment.

Dowl&ny, a Government man.
u

294

Dubbds, mace.
Dubbush, small cattle.

GLOSSARY

Ebbeden, never.

Entka, female.

Ethel, (sing, ethla), tamarisk

timber.
Eyydl, children.

Fdras, mare.

Fatir, a decrepit camel.

Fendy, a kindred, within a nomad

tribe.

Fenjeyn, coffee-cup.
Ferij, a nomad hamlet.
Ferth, cud.
Futdr, breakfast.

Gaila, time of midday heat.

Gattidn, tobacco pipe.

Gdra, oasis soil.

Geria, village.

Ghrazzai, a-wayfaring, upon a

foray.

Ghrazzu, a foray, rode (It. razzia).
Ghrottha, a tamarisk rind.
Girby, water-skin.
Gom, enemies (sing, gomdny).

Habdra, a bustard.

el-Hdbash, Abyssinia.

Haggu, Nomad girdle or waist-
cord, commonly of braided
thongs, worn next the body.

Hdil, strength.

Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca (or
other Holy Place).

Haj, or Hajjy, a pilgrim.

Hakim (wise man), a professor
of medicine.

Hdkim, ruler.

Halal, the lawful.

Halib, milk.

Hamim, the first Summer heat,
in the Hejaz.

el -Ear am, "the forbidden"
(namely, to Unbelievers) ; the
temple courts of Mecca and
Medina; which are called,

therefore, in the dual, el-Hara-

meyn, the two Hdrams.
Hardm, that which is unlawful,

in the Religion.
Hardmy, law-breaker, thief.
Hareem, plur. of horma, a woman.
Harr, hot.
Hdtab, firewood.
Hathr, people of the settlements,

not Nomads.

Hawd, camel's watering-trough.
Hdzam, gunner's belt.
ffejra, small Summer, or flitting

tent.

Helwt sweet.

HensMly, desert thieves.
Hess, voice.
Hijab, amulet.
Hubt, a company of marketing

nomads.

el-Hummu, a dry dead heat.
Hurr; dromedary male.

Ibn, son.

Ihram, the loin-cloth of pilgrims

that enter Mecca.
Istiska, the dropsy.
Ithin, the religious cry to prayer.

Jaddar, cattle path in the
Harra.

Jdhil, ignorant.

Jan (pi. of jin), demons.

Jdra, Bed, housewife.

Jardd, locusts.

Jebel, mountain.

Jehdd, war, for the (Moham-
medan) religion.

Jella, camel-dung.

Jellib, a well.

Jemely camel.

Jemmdl, camel-master.

Jeneyny, pleasure-ground, palm-
orchard.

Jerid, javelin.

Jet, vetch.

Jezzin (pi. of jazy), said of the
great cattle, when, in spring-
time, they drink no water.

GLOSSARY

.//,/ (. i. or lii^h

father . mini tribe or

oasis.

••//, sin;ill-pox.
.////, di'iiuui (pi. Jan.).
.1 num. (die < l.arden of) Par; i

. hunger.
Jubba, long Turkish coat of cloth,

worn in the Ottoman (Jovern-

ment towns.

A'<Wy, a justice.

Kabdil, tribes, pi. of kabila.

Kabila, a tribe.

Kdfila, a caravan.

AV///r, a reprobate, one not of

the saving religion.
Karlm, bountiful.
Kassdd, a riming poet in the

nomad tribes.

Kassida, the lay of a kassdd.
Kelld, redoubt, or stronghold,

upon the Ha j- way.
Keyif, pleasance, solace.
Kelb, dog.
Khdbar, the news.
Khdla, the empty desert.
Khdnjar, girdle-knife.
Khdtm, seal.
Khayin, treacherous.
Kheyr, good.
Khibel, lunatic.
el-Kibd, the liver.
Kitdb, book.
Kufl, Bed., convoy.

Maazib, host.

Maaziba, the place of entertain-
ment.

Mdhal, an extreme barrenness of
the desert soil.

Mdkbara, burying-ground.

Manem, sleeping-place.

Manokh, place where their camels
kneel ; and passengers alight-
ing are received to the public
hospitality.

Mdrhaba, welcome.

Marra, woman.

295

l)iu-k<:t--lik(i

by riding pil^riins.

/, sound :unl :.ti-<»ng, firm.
'in, cities; plur. of me^
ono sick of tho

pox.

Mejldy, Turkish silver dollar.
Mejlis, the assembly, or council

of elders; the open market-

place in Kasim towns.
Mejnttn (one sick, by possession

of the jins), a foolish person.
Menzil, alighting place, camping-

ground.

Mereesy, dry milk-shards.
Mergab, the watch - tower in

Kasim villages ; also any high

look-out rock in the wilder-

ness.

Mesj'id, mosque.
Mil, needle, pillar.
Min ? Who ?
Miry, tribute.
Moghreby, a man of the Moghrib,

or Land of the Sunsetting, an

Occidental, a Moor,
el-Mowla, the Lord God.
Mudllem, teacher.
Muderris, a well-studied man.
Mudowwy, man of medicine.
Muetthin, he who utters the

formal cry, (el-ithin), to prayers.
Muhdfiz, guardian.
Muhakimin, the governed.
Muhazimin, they who go girdled

with the gunner's belt.
Mujeddir, vaccinator.
Mukaad, sitting place (of the

men), in an Arab house or

nomad booth.

Mukdry, a carrier for hire.
Mukkarin, deceitful persons.
Mukoivwerti, a camel-master in

the Haj.

Muksir, the crated camel-litter
"j; of sheykly Beduin women.
Mundkh, v. Manokh.
Musdfir, a wayfaring man.

296

GLOSSARY

Mushrakin, (they who attribute
partners, skurka9 i.e., fellow-
gods, to the Only GOD ;) said
of Christians, and idolaters.

Muslemin, pi. of Muslim.

Muslim, lit. one who is submitted
(to God).

Muttowwa, religious elder (in
Wahaby Arabia).

Muwelladin, the home-born, of
brought-in strange blood ; such
are persons of the servile con-
dition amongst them, in the
second generation.

Ndga, cow camel.

Ndhab, rapine.

Naksh, scored inscriptions.

Nasr, victory.

Neby, prophet.

NP/S, spirit, wind.

Nejis, foul, impious.

Nejm, a star.

Nimmr, leopard.

Nis, the porcupine.

Rabeyby, one-stringed viol of the

Arabians.
Rabia, the tender spring of herbs,

in the wilderness.
Radtf, (dromedary) back-rider.
Rafik, a way-fellow.
Rdfda, a remove, between the

camps of nomads.
Rdhma, mercy.
Rajajtl, armed men of the

Prince's band at Hayil.
Rdjil, a man.
Rdkham, small white carrion

eagle.
Rast head.

Rasul, messenger, apostle.
Rautha, pi. ridth', a green site

of bushes, where winter rain is

ponded, in the desert.
er-Rihh, said by the Nomads for

all kinds of rheums.
Rommh, horseman's lance.
Rubb, lord.
Rubbd, a fellowship.

Saat, an hour.

Sdhar, a magician.

Sdiehh, a religious world's wan-
derer.

Sajjeydy, a kneeling carpet.

Salaam, peace.

Sdmn, clarified butter.

Sdny, a smith.

SebU, the way, path of the
religious life.

Semily, milk skin.

Seyf, sword.

Seyl, torrent, generally a dry
bed, which flows only rarely,
after rain : the Arabs use also
the word as a verb, and say, the
Land seyls towards. . . .

Shahud (witnesses), martyrs.

Shelf a, Beduin horseman's lance.

Sherif, nobleman of the blood of
Mohammed.

Sheykh, an elder, a nobleman, the
head of a tribe, a village head-
man.

Shiddd, camel riding-saddle.

Simtim, the hot land-wind, com-
monly regarded as poisonous.

Sudny, draw- wheel frames of the
irrigation wells, in Nejd oases.

Subbakha, salt-crust upon the
desert soil.

Suffa, the upper chamber, at
Kheybar, so-called.
9 street or bazaar.
es-Sulat, the prayer.
/Stir, town wall.

Tdjir, tradesman.

Tdmr, dates.

Tarkiy, a small wayfaring com-
pany of nomads ; pi. terdgy.

Temmn, a kind of rice, from
Mesopotamia.

Thaif, a guest.

TheMl, a dromedary.

Themtta, shallow water-hole of
the Beduw ; such as is digged
with a stick and their hands.

GLOSSARY

207

77*/Y>, wolf.

Tinintfi'il (images:) inscription

IN sunii-t.iiiH's thus called by

the Nomads.

•piility, gain.

, the religious

doctors.

!!'</<///, a low valley-ground.

\VdJinJnj, the Wahabbies, (new
Arabian Puritan zealots,) are
thus named after their Foun-

drr. MoliaillTwd, \\i\\ '.(/

\\',i/i.i/,, of KastNejd.

//, cattle-brand ; also the
liko token of any family,
kindred, or tribesfolk.
\\rilah, by Ullsih !

/ / woe is me.
Weyrid, a watering.

Zaal, displeasure, sorrow.
Z&d, food.

Zelamat, a carle, a man of the
people.

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